


Tomorrow

by von_gelmini, witchway



Series: Messages [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending -- By the end of the series, College Student Peter Parker, Human Disaster Tony Stark, Insomnia, Invasion of Privacy, M/M, Makeup Sex, Miscommunication, Nightmares, Peter Parker Feels, Possessive Tony Stark, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sleep Deprivation, Surveillance, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Big Dick, Tony Stark Lives, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:20:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22013224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gelmini/pseuds/von_gelmini, https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchway/pseuds/witchway
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Series: Messages [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558027
Comments: 104
Kudos: 157





	1. The scene of the crime

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third book in the [**Messages series**](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558027). We pick up directly after we left off in [**Messages Unsent**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21618124).
> 
> * * *
> 
> We hope you subscribe to the series and the stories within it, so you can get the notifications as each part and chapter comes out.
> 
> Thank you for following the story this far.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On second look, she completely recognized the signs of ‘I’m pissed off at you Tony’ with a side dish of ‘do you even know the definition of the word boundaries’, only with spider-enhanced strength attached. Pepper winced. “Was there a big bunny involved?”

Tony went back inside once Spider-Man swung out of sight. He stood in the ruins of his living room. 

Peter hadn’t _left_ it at ‘goodbye Tony’. That was a positive, wasn’t it? Not those horrible two words. A reprieve at least, if not a positive. Those horrible two words might still come, but not before whenever ‘tomorrow’ turned out to be. It gave him time. Time was just a solution that hadn’t been found yet. He needed to start from the problem and work to that solution before the time ran out. Or if not a solution, to gain more time before time ran out, and gain more time before time ran out on that. A problem he couldn’t solve hadn’t been invented. He just had to work the problem from the _right_ direction this time.

Tony paced the ‘scene of the crime’. Everywhere that Peter had been, he went. Feeling Peter’s lingering presence in the room was comforting, even as angry as he’d been. It was comforting how there had been no hesitation in the way he asserted his presence. He let himself in. By a door no one but Tony used. A door that was unlocked and needed no permission to enter because the door _only_ led to something that was a _part_ of him. Peter stalked around the place where Tony lived like it was his own. (It was, even if he didn’t know it.) He took things. He moved things. He broke things. They were his to take and move and break. There was a fight — explosive, angry, intense, and more than a little bit sexy as fuck — but it was a _couple’s_ fight. 

Feeling Peter there, even when he was gone, felt like when he was spying on Peter, even when he was gone. Only better. It wasn’t left over from something dead and digital. It was left over from someone very much alive. Someone who, even in their lingering presence, Tony was walking around claiming as his. Someone he wasn’t going to let go. 

Fixing the problem wasn’t going to be done by phone or by email. She might be the CEO but he was still the owner of the company. She was going to wake the fuck up and drag her ass over even if it was… two am. That’s why there was a live-in nanny. To take care of late night emergencies at Stark Industries. As the Stark in that equation, he was a late night emergency.

He’d rarely seen her that pissed. She tried to start in on him but he cut her off.

“No.” It wasn’t a tone of voice he used with her before. But it was one he knew she’d heard him use on _others_ to shut down an argument before it began. 

“This is my schedule from now until mid-December. It is immutable and is fixed entirely to this city.” Tony walked over to a printer (it was two am because it took him from one am to get the damn thing functional… _Where the hell is the ink FRIDAY? The paper is empty? Who uses the paper? Paper jam? What am I, a Xerox repairman?)_ and handed her the printouts from its tray. 

“This isn’t yours, you gave me Peter’s college schedule by mistake.” She held the pages out so he could get her the right ones.

“Did I?” He didn’t take the pages back. He sat down in his chair next to the upturned table with the broken glass near the partially caved in wall with the shreds of grey formerly-pants in front of it. He watched her take in the scene.

“Tony what the hell…”

“It’s a little more violent than you used to get, but don’t you recognize the signs of ‘Tony’s pissed off lover’ when you see them?”

“Wait… Lover? I knew you were fucking Peter but…”

“When you only get a couple nights a month, fucking is all you _can_ do. It’s not enough.”

“Tony, no. This… are you out of your mind? Peter’s a kid. You and he… Okay, you’ve always had a thing for barely legal one night stands and for some reason they always fall for it, but…”

“Peter is not a one night stand.”

“Okay, a ‘couple nights a month’ stand.” Pepper shook her head trying to make sense of it all. “And why is this so important that you woke me up and dragged me down here in the middle of the night? I’m not your PA anymore.”

“Peter almost left me tonight. Okay, I gave him good reasons, but they started because of that,” he nodded toward the pages still in Pepper’s hand.

“You’re not making sense. When did you sleep last?”

“It’s been awhile. Doesn’t matter. _That_ does.” Tony scraped his hands across his face. Okay, maybe the lack of sleep did matter. “I love him. And I hope he still loves me, even if I was a jerk.”

“Tony if everyone who loved you stopped loving you because you’re a jerk…”

He chuckled. “You’re not the only one getting my new schedule. My PA’s getting it. Wilson’s getting it. But a good seventy-five percent of me not being here is the business’ fault. Even when I am here I’m not here because I’m here working on some Stark thing from here and not being here.”

“Why am I trying to have a conversation with you when you haven’t slept since you left Sydney?”

“Before.”

“Tony.” Her eyeroll was good. She’d picked it up from close proximity to the best. 

“This is something that has to happen. I’m not going to lose Peter because I’m gone so much that he feels like an escort. I can’t…” He sighed. “I’m in love with him.”

“God Tony if you _are_ in love with him, don’t get obsessed…”

“Too late. What do you think all this is about?” He waved his arm at the ruined living room.

On second look, she completely recognized the signs of ‘I’m pissed off at you Tony’ with a side dish of ‘do you even know the definition of the word boundaries’, only with spider-enhanced strength attached. Pepper winced. “Was there a big bunny involved?”

“Just the threat of a _whole lot_ of billboards in Times Square.”

“You’re serious about this.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll try to work with this.”

“Do more than try, Pep,” Tony said, pleading. “I can’t lose him.”

The other two people didn’t need an in-person summons. His PA was used to getting weird late night demands from him. He sent her an email with Peter’s schedule attached. She was paid to make the schedule happen, period. He sent the explanation and particulars of coordinating with the other people who had been demanding his time. 

That left a phone call.

“Why the hell are you calling at… three in the morning?” Sam grumbled. “You may not sleep, but the rest of the world does. I don’t jump every time you call.”

Tony’s cameras in the compound saw Sam about to hang up. “Don’t take one of my calls and find out what happens to your wings next time you try to fly,” Tony threatened. 

“What the fuck do you want, Stark,” Sam growled, all pretense of politeness disappearing.

“You have a message coming through now,” Tony said, hitting send. “That’s my schedule. I am not leaving New York during it. Anything less than a Thanos-level event, the Avengers can solve on their own. Unless I’m in the mood. Or Peter convinces me to go. And Peter will be treated as the full member of the Avengers that I said he was.”

“That kid…”

“Shut up. I’m not finished talking yet,” Tony spat out.

“Are you ever?”

“Focus up, New-Cap. I am not in the remotest vicinity of fucking around. That ‘kid’ is a man now. You’re gonna stop treating him like he’s fifteen. Without Peter Parker, your ass would still be dusty. The _only_ reason I agreed to Cap’s time travel pitch was because it was a way to rescue Peter. The rest of you could’ve stayed dust for all I care. In case you’re not catching my drift, Peter and I have been in a relationship for almost a year. One I hope will continue for many more years.”

“He’s a KID! What the hell! When did you start…”

“It’s none of your damn business! I don’t owe you an answer, but he was twenty.”

“He’s half…”

“Thin ice, Wilson. I was doing this gig before I ever agreed to join Fury’s super-secret boy band. I can walk away and not lose a damn thing. Can you say the same if I do? Who’s going to keep the Avengers in tech? The compound… how long are the employees going to work without a paycheck? Who’s going to cover all your fuck ups? The Avengers Response Program… gee… I wonder who funds that?”

“What’s flown up your ass?”

“A lovely case of ‘I don’t give a fuck’.”

“When have you ever given a fuck about anyone but yourself?”

“Particulars. One — Schedule. Set in stone. Any conflicts fall in Peter’s favor, not yours. Two — Peter is an Avenger. Period. Any problems with that… take them up with my accountant when you next submit your invoices and they’re refused. Three — Peter and I are a couple. Deal with it.

“You can go back to sleep now, New-Cap. I won’t disturb you and Barnes anymore.” He cut the call, leaving Sam figure out how Tony knew that Bucky was half asleep on the other side of him. Just because he wasn’t going to spy on his lover anymore, didn’t mean he wouldn’t spy on his… frenemies.

He was going to just have his PA send the schedule to Peter. That definitely wasn’t something normal people did, going through an impersonal filter to one’s… potential future forever? That was ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the word his brain almost stuck in there. Obsession? Accurate. But isn’t that what got him into trouble in the first place? Okay, lover would do. For now. Not that what word he used mattered. He was having the conversation with no one except his sleep-deprived self. He went to send the email from his personal account. _(What the hell is the password to my personal account? Have I ever used the thing? I have one… somewhere. FRIDAY send the damn email from whereverthefuck my personal account is.)_

He had FRIDAY darken the windows. He wanted to change the surveillance protocols to account for Peter-with-no-phone. He wanted to _look_ before he fell asleep. He didn’t. But would he have the same determination tomorrow night? When he’d next be away on business? If Peter left him? He’d never loved someone without the connection… _that’s only part of it…_ the control. 

There was one more thing he needed to do.

“FRIDAY, gather all the monitoring programs I’ve written for Peter. Gather anything I have in Karen. Gather the access codes to the surveillance from devices surrounding him. Block me from simply having you write new ones. Encrypt all the programs with an AES-256 block cipher. Hell FRIDAY, you know what I’m trying to do here. Leave only the emergency alerts active.”

“I should inform you that while these actions will leave you unable to monitor Mr. Parker at the current time, you are capable of…”

“I know! But at least I’ll have to be _here_ to do it. I’ll have to port around you and build a black box to break into your security. Which in part includes code for _JARVIS’_ security and he had tighter security than you do! And then I’d have to write new programs that avoid your blocks on a rolling basis. Yes, I can do it. But hopefully before I get finished, I’ll have come to my damn senses.”

“Yes boss.”

“Send Peter a second email from my personal account. Block anyone except him, including me, from accessing that email. In the email send the programs, tell him what I’ve had you do, and send the decrypt key.”

Peter said he would be by tomorrow. Knowing that, he could sleep.

“FRIDAY, kill the fucking clock function,” Tony said having woken up for the second time after sleeping for less than 90 minutes each time. He’d sleep, then wake and try to go back to sleep. The damn minutes would be ticking and his head would be spiralling down dark paths until he passed out again from exhaustion, only to wake up… this time after… _check the clock_ , _it’s not there_ , _check my smartwatch…_ 51 minutes of sleep. That’s all he got that time. Couldn’t even manage one good REM cycle. “Do not display the time _anywhere_ I can see it, for fuck’s sake.”

Even though Peter said they would talk tomorrow (later today), Tony couldn’t shake the sense that the upshot of the discussion would be Peter putting more distance between them. No matter how he looked at it, it seemed like he really didn’t want Tony in his life, control or no control. And the more times he woke up to those thoughts, the more familiar they became within the context of his life. What even had his life been except a series of wanting, followed by distance, followed by rejection, followed by betrayal. With him never catching a clue until it was too late or until it was hammered home with a great deal of… unpleasantness.

He didn’t need to catch a clue because it had been pretty obviously laid out for him. Having gotten to the ‘rejection’ part of it, maybe when ‘tomorrow’ came he should let Peter go before they worked their way to the ‘betrayal’ part. It would hurt to lose him, to let their relationship go. It was a terrifying thought to lose Peter, but to cling so hard that it got to betrayal… How many pieces of himself were left? 

The longer his sleep/not-sleep cycle cycled, the darker the spiral got, the weaker he was, the more useless, more of the pathetic failure he hid so well behind his work and his ego. If being on the platform had felt like opening a vein, this felt like pulling back the skin from the wound and being flayed alive. 

He’d already taken off the surveillance. He’d left Peter Parker alone. Tomorrow he’d take back the suits as Peter distanced himself from the one _true_ thing Tony had to give him. He’d leave Spider-Man alone. The kid needed his space and Tony would give it to him without objection. And things would move on. No matter how bad it was, things always moved on, life rearranged itself. Each time he swore it wouldn’t. Each time it did.

Peter had spoken clearly. He just needed to listen this time and not fight it. Maybe the proper response to the fear those two words brought was to just accept them, return them, and move on.

Sleep was not coming. Lying there expecting it to only chased it farther away. He knew a few things about his chronic insomnia by now and that was one. When you’re tossing and turning, get the fuck out of bed. 

“FRIDAY, send the specifications on the device Stark bought in Sydney to my work station.” He wanted to add ‘start the coffee’ to it, but that was another thing he knew about his insomnia. No caffeine and no booze. Sleep never came that way and even he recognized that he needed it now. No one ever believed that he was fully aware of what he was doing when he had a bout of ‘sleep deprivation’. There were three things that kept him up: the plain old insomnia he’d had since he was a kid, having the work flow like magic in his hands, and the worst: fear of sleeping because sleeping brought nightmares. This was definitely a nightmare.

Downstairs in the lab, he poked and prodded the newest patent acquisition. The guy had no idea what the thing he’d invented was worth. Potentially. Once Tony perfected it. Because Tony always perfected it, whatever ‘it’ was. It’s what he did — when he was awake. Nodding and waking up when your head passed through the hologram and bonked onto the projection table was not the way to _perfect_ anything.

Proper sleep wasn’t anywhere near. Work wasn’t working, at least not without coffee. And coffee was upstairs. It fucked up the possibility of sleep, but fuck sleep for not showing up when she should’ve. Tony dragged himself back up the stairs and dug around to see if there was still any of the Sumatran in the back of the cabinet hidden away from the philistine Avengers. If he was going to be miserable, he might as well do it with his favorite bean. Found. Ground. In the machine. And wait. He sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. 

When his head hit it, it didn’t bonk, it nestled softly against his arm.


	2. That kind of dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I never have that dream. I haven’t studied for an actual test since freshman year. They’re more fun that way,” Peter said as he stood, climbed off the bed, and stepped into the library. He was still blissfully nude, and Tony took a moment to enjoy the beautiful sight of that body walking away from him. Damn, you really could set a glass of champagne on that ass._

_Tony kept one arm, strong and firm, across Peter’s chest, holding him close. With his other hand he stroked his way slowly up Peter’s inner thigh until he was wrapping it around Peter’s cock, which he started working with an expert hand._

_“Your sweet little cock is so hard for me, pretty baby, so hard. Little-Petey feels so good in my hand. He’ll feel even better in my mouth. Will you come in my mouth tonight...hmmm? Will you let me taste you, sweetheart? Will you do that for Daddy tonight?”_

_Peter only whimpered in response._

_The room flickered in the candlelight. Peter’s bare legs were splayed out, long and pale and beautiful, as they sat together on the floor in his decadent bedroom aboard the yacht. Peter had been all bold words and bravado as they danced in the moonlight on the deck, but now he was reduced to helpless gasps and sighs._

_Tony didn’t mind._

_“Touch yourself for me, touch your sweet cock for me, I need to watch you touch yourself,” he whispered, taking Peter’s hand and guiding it where he wanted it to be. He wanted a free hand, but he was loathe to move the one arm holding firmly across Peter’s chest. Peter liked to be held that way. He had said so._

_“Yes, play with yourself for me, that’s my good boy.” He slicked his fingers and pressed them inside, kissing the side of Peter’s face, whispering encouraging words. Peter sometimes had trouble touching himself in front of Tony (unless he could be convinced to stop thinking about it.) “Soon baby, soon, I’ll take care of you soon. If you’re a good boy. Be a good boy for me now, be brave for me, show Daddy how you play with your cock when he’s away. Show me baby.”_

_“You’re away too long,” Peter argued, sounding close to tears. “And you’re going to leave again for Italy, so what difference does it make?” He was letting go of himself and pushing away from Tony’s embrace. His face was wet and Tony was alarmed that he hadn’t noticed before._

_“No, baby, I won’t… don’t cry again… come away from the edge, it’s over ninety stories down, let me get you a glass of wine…” but Peter was already standing up and walking out the door without even dressing._

_“Peter, be reasonable, come back,” Tony said absurdly, following, naked as the day he was born, walking through the rooms of his nonna's house in Naples until he found Peter lying, long and white and deliciously naked, on the old-fashioned wrought iron bed. He seemed happy to see Tony and Tony collapsed in his arms in relief. Peter turned out the lights and pulled him under the covers, pulling him close._

_“You’ll be good for me, you’ll be good for me, won’t you Daddy?” Peter was saying and Tony moaned in assent. Peter had one arm around his neck and was using his free hand to divest Tony of his t-shirt and sweatpants. Tony held on to his face and kissed him back passionately. He loved it when Peter took control of the kissing, even if it was only for a few moments._

_“I need to hear you say it.”_

_“I’ll be good for you Peter… oh…_ **oh** _…” His eyes went wide as Peter reached between his legs, parting them, and his fingers searched out and then pressed into sensitive places. Tony pressed his face against Peter’s face and grinned. That_ **_is_ ** _what ‘be good for me’ meant, after all._

 _“Oh brave boy, that’s Daddy’s_ brave _boy. Oh Peter, baby,_ **_yes_** _. Yes, sweetheart.”_

 _“You’ll be good for_ me _tonight? I want to take care of_ you _tonight, Daddy. You’ll let me, won’t you?”_

 _“Oh yes baby,_ anything _you want. Your sweet little cock is so perfect. You know how badly I want to make him feel good. If this is how you want to…”_

_“I want to make you feel good, Daddy,” Peter was whispering, his fingers, long and slick and sure, were pressing inside repeatedly and sending chills up and down Tony’s spine. “I know you like how my cock feels in your mouth. And I know how good it feels when you do it to me, I know you watch my face… I know you monitor my phone… I know you know all my secrets…”_

_“Well… yes… but not during sex…”_

_“I need this,” Peter was pleading now, sounding desperate. “I need to be inside you Tony.”_

_“I’ve got you baby — I’m here…”_

_“I_ **_need_ ** _this, Tony. Please. I need to be safe.”_

_“You are safe with me baby, I swear, you’re safe with me,” Tony said wrapping his arms around Peter’s shoulders, holding on as tightly as he could. (But what good would that do to Peter, strong enough to punch through walls if he wanted to? How ‘strong’ would Tony’s arms feel to a man like that?)_

_“I need to be safe, oh god I just want to feel safe Tony… ”_

_“I’m here baby, I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you a suit that can stop bullets — that can stop missiles — that can stop a nuclear warhead. I’ll make you safe…”_

_But Peter wasn’t buying it. Even now Peter was looking up and away from him, distracted by the lights coming on in the next room._

_“No, please, don’t worry about that…” Tony found himself pleading but he knew it was too late._

_“We have to go now. It’s the library. But I don’t have a library card.”_

_“Wait, do you have to have… is this like the dream where you show up for the test but you haven’t studied?”_

_“I never have that dream. I haven’t studied for an actual test since freshman year. They’re more fun that way,” Peter said as he stood, climbed off the bed, and stepped into the library. He was still blissfully nude, and Tony took a moment to enjoy the beautiful sight of that body walking away from him. Damn, you really could set a glass of champagne on that ass._

_“There’s no champagne in here, but there are ball-gags,” Peter called out from the other room. Tony dressed as quickly as he could and hurried into the library._

_He didn’t want to be naked and vulnerable in a place like that._

_It was an object-library, not a book-library, Tony noticed immediately as he entered. Even dressed, he felt unsafe there, and took Peter’s hand like a frightened child. Peter looked unperturbed as he walked around the room, taking in the variety of objects, but that’s because he didn’t know what they were._

_Tony knew._

_The center of the room was dominated by a St. Andrew’s cross, but Peter didn’t even notice. He was looking instead at an assortment on a wall, a variety of handcuffs, some fur-lined, some otherwise, arranged artfully around a decorative cock-cage._

_“Eww,” he said practically, and walked on._

_“We don’t need to be here, let’s go back,” Tony was saying as they walked past the assortment of floggers, crops, and paddles, and an obscenely large butt plug._

_“But we need to find your stuff,” Peter said casually. “We need to find the list.”_

_“There_ **_is_ ** _no list…”_

_“Yes there is,” said Peter, reaching onto a shelf of dog collars and pulling out a piece of notebook paper. On the top of the list Tony could clearly read the title:_

_New Sex Acts I Can Pull Out In A Pinch To Keep Peter With Me_

_“But that’s not mine,” Tony was insisting. He was pretty sure he might have written that list in a panic, but then he_ destroyed _it, he remembered. He hated being manipulated, he could never use his experience to manipulate Peter (but he had_ considered _it, oh yes. For a moment, he had considered it.) “It’s not like… that… sex is fun, but it’s what we do together. It’s not to impress you, everything I know I could… it’s to_ share _together. To learn it together. To bring you along with me. All these are just…” He waved in embarrassment at the objects on the wall. “…distractions.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“None of this is what I… I can’t find_ time _here, and_ time _is what I need. I just want the normal couple things with you, if normal is the best word. I had them once with someone I didn’t want them with and wasn’t in love with anymore. Now I have_ you _, and I want them with_ you _, because I’m in love with_ you _, but I can’t have them. I have to find out what that combination is — you plus love plus something that looks like a normal life. They don’t have that here.”_

_“But this is all sex stuff. It’s THAT kind of dream.”_

_“It doesn’t have to be, let’s just go back to my nonna's house in Naples, it was better for us there.”_

_“But_ **_you_ ** _know. You_ **_know_ ** _what all_ **_these_ ** _things are for,” Peter said, idly looking around the room, focusing on another display. His forehead creased in confusion. “What are Ben Wa balls?”_

 _“You can pick my brain all you want, if you want, yes, lots of experience. Just like your first time, I’m here for you. We’ll be there_ together _— I can just guide you through the unknown spots…”_

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was never a virgin. I was born de-virginized. I’m a mutant. That’s my mutant power.”_

_“And I love you for it baby. But can we get out of here? There’s something important I’m supposed to be doing… I’m pretty sure…”_

_“These are_ **_obscene_** _,” Peter said, amusement in his voice as he reached down into a box of dildos to find something. “But you know which one is the most obscene of all?”_

_“The 14 inch gold one with the diamonds?” Tony asked, but all Peter came up with was a set of car keys._

_“No… you won’t let me buy you a car. You gave me quite a lecture when I tried…”_

_“Not that one,” he said, diving down into the box again and pulling up an expensive watch. It was a Patek Philippe, of course, the kind Tony was longing to buy Peter and but wasn’t sure if he could get away with it._

_“Not that one,_ this _one.”_

_He reached down with both hands and shook it free. It was his IronSpider suit._

_“_ ** _No_** _, dammit, that is different! Dammit Peter this_ isn’t _the same! I love you! Anyone can buy you a car or a watch if you were willing to take it. This isn’t about how much money I have!_ **_Fuck_ ** _Peter this thing came_ **_straight out of my brain_** _. It’s the best my brain can come up with and I’m giving it_ **to you!** _To protect you and keep you safe. No one else can give that to you. How can you not see it? This is_ **me**. _I’m giving_ **me** _to you!”_

_Peter just rolled his eyes._

_“I said ‘obscene’ Tony. This isn’t what I was talking about. You have a_ **real** _weird idea about the definition of ‘obscene’. Must be a generational thing.”_

_He plunged his hand into the bottom of the box and dug around for a while. Dug around for so long Tony’s stomach knotted. He didn’t want to know what was more obscene than…_

_Peter pulled it out and shook it free. His broken phone._

_“That’s it. That’s_ **_obscene_** _.”_

_“Please, baby, we have to leave. There’s something I’m supposed to be doing…”_

_“Yeah, you’re supposed to be spying on your boyfriend. Real romantic. Goodbye Tony.”_

_“No!” Tony shouted, far too loudly, but Peter was already gone. Tony chased after him down endless hallways, shouting his protestations, gasping for air and trying to find his voice because he was begging Peter to come back. And Peter wanted him back — he knew that — Peter was saying, “_ Come back to me Tony. Tony? Hey. Come back to me” _and Tony tried desperately to stop making noise so he could locate the source of the sound. Peter sounded calm and level and infinitely patient, just like he did when…_

“Tony, come back to me.”


	3. Did you sleep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Was I having a nightmare?” Tony blinked slowly several times, trying to clear the ghosting images. His eyes focused. Not moving was best, though, until he felt himself completely settle, present in his body.

Tony startled awake and looked down the length of the arm that his head was resting on, to see Peter calmly standing beside him, patiently waiting for his eyes to focus. For a moment, Tony assumed they were in bed — he had encountered Peter after quite a few nightmares before — and Peter had always talked him down just like this.

“Hey, Tony. Hi! Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Tony said sleepily, not moving. 

His voice was hoarse. He’d been screaming at some point during the nightmare. Which he didn’t remember. He refused to remember. Whoever the monster in the dream was, it wasn’t him. He would never… _never_ say those things. Not even dream them. Not even nightmare them. He could never look at the way he and Peter made love like that, using his experience as a way to manipulate him. The nightmare was irreconcilable with their life together. He supposed that’s why they called them nightmares. They dredge up the nastiest things from the collective unconscious and throw them at you while you’re too weak to fight.

“Was I having a nightmare?” Tony blinked slowly several times, trying to clear the ghosting images. His eyes focused. Not moving was best, though, until he felt himself completely settle, present in his body.

“Yes you were having a nightmare you moron, you’re asleep in a _kitchen._ Why aren’t you in your huge bed?”

“I was… I was in bed. Bed wasn’t working. So I did. Only working wasn’t working. So…?” He tried to figure out what happened last night after he’d given up on sleep.

“I’d be mad at you but you look too pathetic to yell at right now,” Peter said sadly, pulling the man into a gentle embrace. “Seriously Tony, you look awful.” 

His back and his neck were screaming. Yep. Physical pain equals present in body. He sat up on the stool instead of slumped over onto the counter, nice as Peter’s arms felt around him like that. Tony kept his hand on Peter’s arm, not wanting to lose his touch. He arched his back and circled his neck, trying to release the tension there. “Yeah. That’s because sleeping at the kitchen counter fuckin’ sucks. How the hell did I get here? I have no idea. I was in the workshop and… okay… coffee. That’s how I got here. Musta fallen asleep finally.”

“Did you even get my email? I told you I’d come after Differential Equations; that’s why I didn’t get here until now, so I can be here for the rest of the day if you want. I got some… weird… emails this morning…”

“I didn’t get your email because when I have insomnia, the worst thing for it is to be around anything that displays time. I had FRIDAY shut _everything_ down.” 

Tony winced as he remembered. He probably hadn’t been at his most coherent. “The emails… I’m giving you what you asked for. Time. It’s what I want too. My schedule matches yours. I _summoned_ Pepper out of bed at two am and…” He smiled and chuckled softly. _“That_ was an experience. But she has my schedule. My PA has my schedule. New-Cap has my schedule.” 

He ducked his head, hoping the remaining emails would be taken in the manner they were intended and not start another argument. “The other two… did you read them? That’s all of it. I’ve blocked FRIDAY from letting me do anything that will recreate it. I mean, I’m me. I can do it, but it’ll take a fuckton of work to do so. And, like I told Fri, hopefully I’ll have come to my senses before I finish.”

“Okay, okay, slow down hot rod. There’s some things we need to talk about… a _lot_ of things. I should put you to bed first, though. Force you to get some actual sleep.”

“I am _not_ some fucking child that you ‘put to bed’ or force to sleep, dammit!” Tony said, his voice rising. “Sleep has nothing to do with _any_ of this. I slept. FRIDAY how much did I sleep on the counter?”

“Four hours boss.”

“See? Plenty of sleep. Time enough to get in a nice fucking long ass nightmare about what you said. ‘Goodbye Tony’.” He calmed his voice and looked directly at Peter. “Pretty clearly said and very clearly heard.”

There was certainly a time where Tony raising his voice would have made Peter take a step back, made him start apologizing immediately, or at least duck his head and look apologetic. But not today. He was vaguely curious to note that he didn’t even have to fight off the _urge_ to apologize — an interesting development that fit neatly into a theory he was working on, a theory he might choose to share with Tony later. Maybe. For now he just looked calmly at the dark circles under Tony’s eyes and spoke matter-of-factly. 

“Yeah, I said that. And then I said I _wasn’t_ leaving you and I didn’t know why. And this morning I figured out why. I figured it out when I woke up and the first thing I did was reach for my non-existent phone so I could text you and ask you _‘Did you sleep?’_

“And that’s when I realized — I have to stay with you because _I’m in love with you._ And if I break up with you, who the hell is going to nag you into eating right, or ask when you last took a break? And who is going to sleep in the same bed with you when you DO decide to sleep in New York? We both know you can’t pick up a boy to spend the night with you, not with those nightmares. If I broke up with you, it would make all these questions reeeeeally awkward. Because I’d still be asking them…” He reached out and tried to stroke some of Tony’s wayward hair into place. “Because I love you.” 

“Picking up a boy is easy. They _never_ stayed the night. But the only boy I want in my bed is right here. The only boy I want to let into my _life_ is right here.” Tony smiled softly and didn’t even realize he was doing it when Peter’s hand went through his hair. It felt wonderful though. Did a whole lot to shake the cobwebs loose and send any lingering haze of nightmare running away. 

“Only… if the reason you’re staying with me is because I need someone to _take care_ of me and you’d be worried about me if you were away… Baby, I can hire a live-in nurse to do that and send you daily reports. If you stay, it has to be because you **_want_ ** to. Not because you _can’t leave even though you want to leave._ If you want to leave and are simply having a hard time deciding on which side of the coin your decision is going to fall… it’s going to hurt like hell… but you know where the door is. ‘I love you’ means you _want_ to stay. Not that you just can’t make a decision to stay or to go.”

“Okay genius, then my decision is to put you in a hot shower and feed you breakfast. Before you hire a live-in nurse to do it. Because I want to.”

Peter took Tony’s hand and started to lead him to the bedroom. Tony was about to object about being ‘put to bed’ again, when Peter led him past the bed into the bathroom. He wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Not with everything still… at least in his mind… unresolved. But a shower? That sounded like a little piece of heaven. 

“If you hired a live-in nurse to take care of you I’d be pestering HER constantly about how well she’s taking care of you, and she’d get pissed and then I’d have to web her to the ceiling and tell you she moved to Amsterdam, unless it’s a guy, and if it was even a remotely cute guy I’d have to web _him_ to the ceiling and tell you he moved to Amsterdam, so you see either way I’ll be committing a felony so we should avoid that.” 

“You can put me in the shower. Because… you’re right… I need it. You say you want to take care of me. But taking care of me and worrying about me can _not_ be the point on which the decision hovers. I have taken care of myself for 53 years…”

“YES AND YOU SUCK AT IT look in a mirror dude.”

Tony refused to look in the bathroom mirror where Peter gestured to make his point. He knew he looked like shit. He knew he’d looked worse. “…through things a lot worse than a few nightmares, if you recall correctly from my biographies.” 

“Yeah, reading ALL your biographies was my hobby. Now THIS IS MY HOBBY so maybe you should shut up now Tony. Obviously, the decision hovers on how well you and I can figure this one out. We’ve figured out crazier puzzles than this one — with crazier people. Remember when we were in the Q ship and remember how Horse-Face…”

“Squidward.” _Tony_ was the one to give out the nicknames.

“…was going to skewer Dr. Strange with ALL the needles and we sent him out an airlock — that you made?”

“This is a little more difficult than remembering the plot to Alien.”

Peter reached behind his neck and pulled his shirt off over his head. “Well, okay, but anyone can remember the plot to an old movie.”

“This, it’s not a hard puzzle to solve. We ran out of time. I made time. _You_ want space. I’ll give you your space. _You_ want to give the suits I made for you back. I’ll take the suits back. _You_ want privacy. I gave you privacy.” 

“Yeah — you made — yeah.” Peter unfastened the top button on his jeans. “That was a lot of change in one hour. I don’t even want to know what Pepper was like in the middle of the night.” He bent down to unlace his shoes, smiling up at Tony. “Are you… are you REALLY taking a month off? Like, really?” He kicked his shoes off. His pants followed.

“More than that. I’ve adjusted my entire schedule to coincide with your school schedule. I’ll do that every semester and take every break off with you. That’s what I told her. It’s going to have to be a very special, and rare, thing for me to get on that jet for Stark. And if I have to, I’ll try to take you with me.”

“Thats… big. So… can we go back to planning that trip to Italy now?” Peter gathered his clothes up and stood there naked with them hung over his arm.

“Yeah. If you decide you _want_ to stay, yeah. But not this half in/half out thing. I can’t do that baby.” 

“What is half in/half out?”

“The… _I’m staying but I don’t know why I’m staying but I’m staying but I’m not happy about it._ One foot in, one foot out the door. That’s what I mean.” 

The pants and underwear were draped over the loveseat. The shirt wound up scrunched on the little table beside it. The shoes were nudged out of the way under the sink counter. “Well Jesus Christ moron, that’s what I’m here to talk about. I told you I’d come and I’m here. But honestly Tony, _look at yourself._ I don’t think it would be ethical to demand that we talk right now. You look like you’ve been hit by a train. And I’ve been hit by a train so I’m the expert.”

“Bet Fury owed Eurail the price of a new nose cone on the Intercity Express.”

“Probably. And also?” Peter reached out and took Tony’s belt in both hands. He used it to pull Tony closer to him, until they were nose to nose. 

“Fuck your ‘foot in the door’,” he said quietly. “There’s no fucking door. I **_just now_ ** tried to explain that to you. But then you decided to tell me about live-in nurses.”

He looked down and undid Tony’s belt. “I’d be insulted, but like I said you look too beaten up to get mad at right now.”

Tony let Peter move from taking off his pants to getting him out of his shirt. He was too done, physically and emotionally, to fight it. Especially, even though he’d _never_ admit it, it felt good being taken care of by someone who… he hoped really meant what he said… loved him and was staying. “Kid, do you have any idea what you said to me last night? And I’m not talking about inside when we were fighting. That doesn’t count for either of us. We were fighting and that shit never counts. Shit gets said by both sides. I’m talking about outside.”

 _“_ ** _Wow_** _,”_ Peter said, rolling his eyes. He could undress Tony without actually _looking_ at Tony. “Yeah. I do. Do you remember what you said to me? Can we at least get you _into_ the shower before we go there?”

“Yes. I would love to wash the Australian dirt off me. I feel worse than I look.”

“That’s NOT possible.”

“Then let’s do something about it. FRIDAY, set the shower, for both Peter and I. Because if you set it for me, it’ll scald him. Spidey boy with enhanced senses and delicate skin.”

“Fuck you Stark.”

“Tried to get you to do that… you objected,” Tony said teasingly with a quick lecherous grin. “I’d be happy for a do-over under _much_ better circumstances at a _later_ date.”

 _“Oh_ that is in the plan. Showers first. I require you at least look human.” Peter stepped away and went into the shower. 

Tony finally turned and stood there, looking in that mirror. God, when had he changed his clothes last? When he got on the jet. And it had been almost three days since he had a shower. No wonder Peter thought he looked like a wreck. He started to unfasten the buttons on his shirt, but kept stopping as he kept drifting up into his head. 

Peter noticed that Tony hadn’t followed him into the shower but was standing there staring at himself in the mirror. He stepped out and put his hands over Tony’s. He took over unbuttoning his shirt. Tony was too tired to fight it. He hated to admit it, he _couldn’t_ admit it, but it _did_ feel good to have Peter take care of him. To _want_ to take care of him.

Peter took Tony’s hands and led him into the shower.


	4. Fuckin’ bliss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony certainly groused, a lot, about being TOLD he’d be taken care of, but now that Peter was **_doing it?_** No complaints at all.

The hot water felt _obscenely_ good. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and let the water pour over him from the rainshower head. Eyes still closed, he waved his hand over a sensor and more jets came on, spraying water gently over every inch of him. “Fuck,” he moaned, bending his head down and letting the water run down his back instead of his front. He stood there, feeling the tension wash down the drain with the sensation of water on his skin.

The body of a fifty-three year old beat-the-fuck-up superhero was not made to sleep at kitchen counters. Nor made to stay awake for… twenty-four hours since he landed from a twenty-one hour flight which was after another thirty-six hour day preceded by being up for another fuck… he had been still awake from the day before when he received the text notices at two am so that was at least another eighteen hours. This was a new personal best (worst?) for him. With only a four hour restless sleep, some failed attempts in bed for maybe another three hours, and a few ten minute naps on the plane. Yikes. Okay. The body was _definitely_ complaining about it. He was still capable of coherent thought — that never left him until he actually _literally_ passed out from exhaustion, which he probably would’ve by now if it hadn’t been for those little sleeps.

He could sense Peter in the shower with him even though his eyes were closed. The spray moving around his body in the space. Feet on the tile. All the things that meant that someone else was there, even when you can't see them. This was nice. He couldn’t figure out why it was nice. (Some things were unfathomable in the context of his life.) But at least there was no rush to get ready for the day. Not even any need to hurry up to squeeze sex into the time they had. They’d have time for that later. Because FRIDAY, lovely girl, had still not turned his life back on since he had her turn it off last night. So screw Pepper and her morning meeting about Sydney, that he already missed, and probably had a screen full of notifications about. Tony shifted under the spray and groaned. “Fuck Pete, this is fuckin’ bliss. Baby. I needed this.” He looked over at the naked boy in the shower with him and gave him a half-lidded smile.

“Oh, so, no hired in-home nurse to do this for you?” Peter teased gently as he began to wash Tony’s hair.

“It wouldn’t work,” Tony said, leaning his head back so Peter could scrub his fingers along his scalp. “I don’t care who the nurse was… I could never…”

Despite how wonderful it felt having Peter wash his hair — and honestly? the phrase ‘better than sex’ never made sense to him until now — he winced. But then Peter found a spot right at the top of his neck and he was able to continue.

“I could never let anyone… no one but you… yeah, I’ve showered naked with people before… that’s not it. It’s — baby _god_ that feels _good._ Naked and… hell, even _clothed —_ fuck, how am I supposed to think when you’re doing _that,”_ he said with a little smile, not at all complaining.

“I can open up with… _words…_ but… _physically…_ Pete… the armor never comes off my body. It can’t. Not when there’s another person who might… It _can’t._ Not ever.” He turned to face Peter, lowering his head so the kid’s fingers could work their magic on the top of his scalp. “Only you. Only now. I need… I need you… to be _real.”_

A deep shudder ran through him. Hopefully able to be attributed to… No. Hopefully able to be attributed to nothing other than what it was. _Vulnerability._ He raised his head and brought their foreheads together. “You’re the only one I can _trust…_ with… with this.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. So much was still unresolved. But here he was _trusting_ Peter again. “Please baby…” His voice fell to a whisper. _“Don’t…”_ He could say _a lot,_ but he couldn’t say those last two words. _Don’t hurt me._

Peter aimed Tony’s head under the spray to clean off a space on his forehead enough to reach up and kiss him firmly.

“I won’t,” he whispered. (Although he was only relatively sure what he had just agreed not to do.)

Peter towelled them both off and brought Tony a pair of boxers. He was amused to find he was allowed to dress the man, and he did. Then he put his own clothes back on.

He took a moment to look at Tony, sitting patiently, watching him in amusement. He realized he could certainly ask for anything at the moment — sex on the bed (or on the couch as he had planned) and thought carefully about his priorities. Tony certainly groused, a lot, about being TOLD he’d be taken care of, but now that Peter was _**doing it?**_ No complaints at all. Still, Peter couldn’t count on this lasting much longer. So he told himself ‘no’ to the sex, did the responsible thing, took the man by the hand, and led him into the kitchen to be fed.

“Okay, so, for the record?” he said as they walked. “I have never lied to you Tony.”

“I know that,” Tony said, briefly interjecting but not stopping Peter from talking.

Peter made a face as they entered the kitchen, steering Tony to sit down in hopes to hide it. He knew he’d have to modify that statement, but he already had plans for THAT confession. Food came first. “Good. I’m glad you know. So the problem is I have _no idea_ what ‘we were fighting and that doesn’t count’ means. I have no clue,” he said as he searched the refrigerator for something edible.

“Everything I said to you, inside _and_ outside, was the god's honest truth,” he continued, as he settled on making Tony a sandwich.

“And, by the way? Last night, I was angrier at you that I’ve probably ever been, ever, in my life. Because until I walked into your place and found you searching for Book Spine Poetry, I was only ninety-eight percent sure that you were really reading my phone. And then I _was_ sure you were and you didn’t seem to feel any need to apologize. More importantly, I needed you to explain some things for me…” Peter looked away for a moment, then turned back with a determined chin. “And I had to figure them out on my own, and I didn’t like that. But as angry as I was, when I woke up this morning I woke up with one thought. ‘Is he okay? I should text him’. That was my epiphany. That’s why I’m staying.

“But, oh! You don’t _like_ my epiphany! Well, fuck you Stark. It’s my epiphany and I like it fine.

“Now here’s the funny part.” Peter added, gesturing with the knife he needed to spread the spicy mustard.

“There was certainly a time when you’re disapproval of my epiphany would be the end of it — I used to live and die by your approval. But for a good six weeks now, fuck, for months now really, I’ve had to live without it. And now that it’s back — wow. I don’t really care if you approve or disapprove. _I just need you to have an opinion._ You don’t like my epiphany? Great! I’m just so damn glad you noticed.”

Peter reached across the counter and put Tony’s sandwich in front of him. Tony was too relaxed from their shower to object. And his stomach was _definitely_ not going to object either. He last ate in Sydney, at the meeting where he bought that guy’s patent right out from under him. Peter was right. Sometimes he was a disaster at taking care of himself.

When he started eating the sandwich, something Peter had made to _take care_ of him, Tony realized that maybe it wasn’t so bad being taken care of. As long as it was Peter doing it. Peter was always the exception. To everything.

“So now I really need to know — Tony — all that time you were spying on me, all that time you never acknowledged if you approved or disapproved of what I was doing but — were you curious? Were you… interested?

“Because if you _were…_ that’s something.”

“Was I interested? Why would I be spying on you if I wasn’t? I have monitors literally _everywhere._ FRIDAY fuckin’ _owns_ the internet. But I never look at it. She gives me alerts for things that are dangerous or against my interests. But looking at those monitors? Spying through them? Why would I? I don’t give a damn about any of those people. I spied on you because I thought that was the only way I could _see_ you. The only way I could know what you were doing. Watching you? God… that was the most fascinating thing ever.”

Peter nodded, and turned to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. But really he was hiding a smile. Had to hide it for a while. Finally he pulled his head out of the fridge, biting his lip, nodding.

“Okay… okay… that’s… see I can work with… that’s a start.” He washed the knife and put it in the sink, still trying to hide his grin. For a while, he said nothing.

Tony watched Peter moving about his _(their)_ kitchen. They’d had a fight and now they were moving to the… understanding each other part? He had no idea. But he had to explain why he objected to what Peter told him.

“Okay Pete, maybe I kinda _have_ to hate your ‘epiphany’. Because the alternative? Baby, I’ve never _known_ the alternative. You saying that the entire reason you’re going to stay with me is ‘I love you’ _and_ ‘I want to take care of you’? The first, I can comprehend. But conjoined with the second? I can’t. So yeah, Parker, your epiphany sucks.”

Peter nodded sagely. “Fair enough. We disagree! I’m excited! This is progress!”

Tony ducked his head. “Your epiphany only _partly_ sucks. Because… this…? You’ve been taking care of me. Maybe… it’s okay sometimes. As long as it’s _you.”_

“Well _of course_ it’s me, dumbass. Now… can you please explain this phenomenon of “We said some things that don’t count and some that do?” Because I remember what you said, but I wasn’t trying to qualify it at the time.”

“Did May and Ben ever fight? _Seriously_ fight? I don’t think they did, from your not understanding that.”

“Yup,” Peter said, pointing Tony toward his sandwich. He spoke while Tony ate. “Small house, heard it all. Then Ben would leave until she cooled down and then I’d be asleep by the time he’d get back so I never heard the makeup part.” Peter stopped for a moment and grinned. “Is _this_ the makeup part?”

Tony chuckled. “Yeah. I guess this is the makeup part. I never heard that part either. Not because I was asleep, but because it _never happened._ Nothing said during a fight counts. Because if it did, it would be unliveable with. Everyone just picked up and went on like nothing happened.”

“Oh, gross. Well, you and I are smart so we won’t be doing that. Pretending that it never happened. Because that would be stupid.”

“Smart people do stupid things all the time. We had three very smart people in that house who steadfastly refused to admit anything had ever happened. Ever. So there was no makeup part because to have a makeup part meant something _had_ happened. And it didn’t. So there. And since we’re all smart, then that’s the truth, right?” Tony shook his head. “It’s absurd how stupid smart people can be.” He smiled at Peter. But yeah… not pretending like it didn’t happen… that’s nice.”

“Good. But I stand by what I said _—_ _ **I**_ meant everything I said last night.”

“O…kay.” Tony considered it. What it would be like to not pretend that what was said mattered. Because he didn’t know. “A lot of it… was me trying to bullshit my way out of a problem… I hope you can recognize that. I mean, it’s pretty obviously a _me_ thing to do. A _stupid me_ thing to do but me nonetheless. The other things? Yeah. I meant what I said. But… things in an argument… you know the concept of ‘pulling out the big guns’ the ones that shouldn’t ever get pulled out between people who love each other? There wasn’t ever anything _less_ than the big guns pulled. So…,” he shrugged, “you baffle them with bullshit… kinda like blowing the flares. Keeps the attack from landing.

“The internet & innuendo — anything I said about that was completely bs and trying to fight things I _knew_ I shouldn’t be fighting. And I got MASSIVELY stupid. And I _knew_ I was being stupid while I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop doing it because I’m fuckin’ stupid and fall into habits that all my life have kept people away. Only I don’t want to keep you away. So when we got out onto the roof, I realized I had to be honest with someone for the first time. And I told you honest, and true, things. And that was so new to me. It felt like I was bleeding out with every word. But I didn’t mind because if you left, what did I need blood for? The choice was keep bs’ing and have you leave or tell you the truth and hope you stayed. I finally had to tell the truth because I finally have someone I love.”

Peter sighed with relief, even as he tried to process all he was being told. “Okay, okay I think I get it. I’m sorry because this is all new to me — when people pull out ‘big guns’ and point them at me I tend to climb a wall and hang from the ceiling. Or web them up. Usually both. Sorry I’m being too literal again. To be perfectly honest I don’t think I ever HAVE had an argument with my boyfriend… fuck I _know_ I haven’t! So this is all virgin territory for me. I’m still learning.

“But, wait, I thought when you say ‘big guns’ you mean like an _action_ — like HERE’s what I’m shooting you with: ‘I’m leaving now goodbye’.”

“That’s it _for you._ Not for anyone else. They can all leave. I don’t give a fuck. For you… god Pete… you terrified me more than I’ve been scared… in a _hell_ of a long time. I love you. You’ve… seen a part of me that — I mean this literally, Peter — NO ONE has ever seen. To have that…,” Tony’s voice broke, “betrayed. I… serious big gun.”

Peter stood and leaned over gingerly, putting a gentle kiss on Tony’s forehead. But he didn’t interrupt the man. He wanted to keep being honest — it was a point of honor now.

“ _Yeah._ I said I was leaving you. Not as a ‘big gun’ because I wasn’t lying, at that moment, I meant it. Because I came to you with a problem and you gave me this bizzaro bullshit answer and I… I’m not used to that at all. When I come to you with a problem in the lab we work on it together. And god, in bed we’re… you’re just so damn intuitive I barely even _have time to ask you_ before you’re on with a solution. So I came to you with a massive problem and I got a cloud of… Tony it never occured to me that you DIDN’T mean all that stuff about having the right to spy on MJ and Ned or... and it was garbage… _but you didn’t mean any of that…_ and that’s big. Okay, I get it. I’m always too _literal,_ I know that…” (He used the word ‘literal’ instead of ‘naive’. He hated the word ‘naive’ so badly he couldn’t make himself say it out loud. But dammit, he _had_ been.)

“Brutal honesty seems admirable. Until you realize that the first word in the phrase is _brutal._ So… I was terrified, baby. And you throw whatever you can at it to make the monster go away.

“See, in the lab we never throw anything at each other. Although I’ve seen you throw things at DUM-E and you’ve said some pretty rude things to him. But you’ve never said anything like that to me. Okay. The lab and the bedroom and the… rooftop… are different places and I’ll have to remember that. Should I ask you if you’re speaking literally while we’re arguing?”

“There’s a _qualitative_ difference between the way things were inside, as opposed to the way things were outside. You could’ve walked into the lab and we could’ve done the same thing as happened here. It wouldn’t have mattered that we work well together there versus here. I can remember times when we worked well here. Location is irrelevant.

“Asking if I’m speaking literally? Don’t think it would work. Inside, there was only the fight. Outside we both _tried_ to make the other understand, but neither of us _heard_ the other. In an argument, everyone focuses on their theory and only notice the data that fit it. Confirmation bias. You couldn’t tell the difference between me saying ‘I spy just because I can’ and ‘I spy because it’s all I get to have of the people I love’.

“I love you and it’s all I had of you.”

Peter reached out with one tentative hand and placed it on Tony’s back. He feared if there was an embrace now it wouldn’t end (and Tony still needed to finish eating.) “I love you, Tony. He said quietly. “And you can have more of me than that. A lot more of me.”

They sat together quietly while Tony ate. _Peacefully_ quiet, not just silent. Tony’s stomach was a bit in revolt, but now that he’d had a few bites it remembered, oh yeah, this is what food is when my human isn’t fucking STARVING me. Tony laughed and shared the thought, which brought him an eyeroll and a smile.

“Getting rid of all the bullshit I said last night… Honestly? The spying thing?” he said when he’d finished one sandwich and ate half of the other Peter sat in front of him when his plate was empty. “I only ever did that when I was losing people.” He turned to face Peter. “It’s… when I’m out of control… and I can’t do anything and people are doing things _to_ my life, making decisions _for_ my life. Those decisions always involved losing the people I cared about.” Tony paused. When he began again, his voice was quieter, more resigned. “It was easier to deal with them as a digital ghost because if I called… if I talked to them… even if I _wrote_ to them… it was…” He sighed. “I was too aware of what I’d lost.”

“I get that — but I don’t get the part where you lost me. When did you lose me?”

“When were we together? We had what, about three months? Then you were gone. I never lost people because _they_ left. They were _taken_ from me. You were _taken_ from me. You were a distraction from the responsibilities I have and the expectations _other people_ have for how important those responsibilities should be in my life. _Somebody else_ decided you weren’t as important as those responsibilities were. I couldn’t… I never have been able… to say no. Not to it coming from _there._ So you were _taken away.”_

“Oh, okay. That’s… heavy. But you’re making… you’re making a lot of sense,” Peter said quietly. “I didn’t know I was being taken away, I always think of you as in control of all that. When the world isn’t ending, I mean. And sometimes even then you’re still in control.”

Tony laughed. “I am _**so**_ not in control, baby.” He looked at Peter and took his hands. “That’s going to change. For you.”

“So I… kind of need to tell you something. And I _kind_ of need to tell you on the couch. So… c’mere.”

He was still content to let Peter lead him where he wanted to. Where he’d been led so far had been _nice._ Tony sat on the sofa and Peter sat next to him, one leg pulled up so he could turn and face him.

“Okay,” Peter said, taking a deep breath.


	5. Your amygdala and your medial prefrontal cortex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Normal for us will _never look_ normal to anyone else. But there are things that both of us need to be able to _approach the realm_ of normality with.”

“So… I wanted, last night, for you to apologize to me, and you never did. But I realized something on my way home. You’ve told me, more than once, ‘apologies are meaningless, anyone can say ‘I’m sorry’ and no one ever means it, all that matters is what you _do’._ So here is what I’m going to _do._

“What I want from you, and what I was trying to tell you last night, was that I need for you to _fucking talk to me._

 _“_ ** _And you did_** _._ I thought about all those texts you sent to me that night, that night you gave yourself away. I screwed up that night. Because I didn’t have any context… you literally sounded like a man who had just escaped a burning building… so I made a mistake. You texted like a man who was apologizing after a fight, but we hadn’t _had_ a fight, so I thought you were being paranoid because you were sleep deprived. Paranoia is a symptom of sleep deprivation. 

“But thinking about them now… _damn_ Tony. In between what you texted me and what you told me on the roof last night… that’s more than you’ve ever told me about yourself in… well… ever. In the entire year that we’ve been dating. 

“So this is what I’m going to **_do_** _._ I’m going to say ‘thank you’. I wanted you to talk to me and you did. Now there’s a lot there to unpack, and we can talk about each point in detail for as long as you want, but right now I’m going to say **_‘thank you’._ **

“And... it occurred to me last night, when I was going to sleep… when I get lonely again, I’ll just wait until you get on one of your I-Am-Super-I-Don’t-Sleep bends and when that disrupts the connection between your amygdala and your medial prefrontal cortex, then just start a conversation. I’ll have to abandon my urge to take care of the man I love, but it’s a compromise.”

Tony gave a quiet, exasperated sigh. “My opening up to you has nothing to do with how many hours of sleep I’ve had,” he said. “It has to do with the fact that you are _you_ and I am in love with you. So if you want to _exploit_ the fact that I have a disordered sleep cycle…” Tony stopped, realizing how unreasonable he was being. “Okay… you’re right. When my lack of sleep gets _this bad,_ then you can complain about it. Anything over three days, you have my permission to ask me about my sleep. Better still, take me into the shower and wash my hair.” He smiled softly. “Baby, that was _heaven.”_

“I love you, so I take care of you. Complain all you want, but I’m sticking to it,” Peter said with a stubborn grin and leaned forward for a kiss. 

But a short one — there were things he had to… say… before the real kissing began. He leaned his head back on the sofa and bit his lip, trying to work up the nerve to begin. But Tony was looking down at his lap, his mouth tensing, which meant he was about to speak again.

Peter let him go first.

“There’s something else you need to know first. I wasn’t avoiding you.” Tony paused before continuing on to a much more difficult subject. “But I couldn’t be open with you, not even on the few nights we actually had together.” 

Some things were easy to tell Peter. ‘I love you’, words he hardly ever said before, came easily. But the words needed to explain this… those words were difficult to say _even_ to Peter.

“I _couldn’t_ be open with you. I couldn’t be like I’d been before. I couldn’t let it leave me…” Tony took a heavy breath. There were words he didn’t think he’d ever be able to say with ease. ‘Vulnerable’ was one of the big ones. “When I’m with you, I’m…” And there it was again. Unable to be said. “I’m _me_ me. I can’t spend our night together being _me…_ then wake up to deal with them and have all that…,” it was almost as bad of a word, but not quite, “…exposed. 

“I’m good at being THE Tony Stark, like you described it. It’s what everyone expects me to be. Except you. The man I am when I’m with you… god I like that guy _so_ much better. But I can’t be that man and then, whenever they call, pack myself away.” Tony closed his eyes. “It’s so hard because I don’t want to go back to being the person they want. It takes time in my head to leave you, to leave us, to leave me.” 

He paused again, frustrated with himself for being unable to make himself clear. Unable to admit the ‘why’ for all of this. _“They_ absolutely _cannot see me,_ Peter,” Tony finally said, quietly. He opened his eyes. “So I couldn’t be _with_ you when I was with you because they might _see.”_

“Wow… that’s… wow.” Peter said gently. “I had no idea. I remember when you would say ‘I’m not making much sense’ and I said that you were, because what you were saying made perfect sense _to me._ I thought that was incredible. And then we didn’t talk like that for a very long time. I didn’t know that was why. I mean I figured it was because you couldn’t relax because you were so busy but I didn’t know… wow.”

“It all made no sense…,” he bit his lips, “in the context of my life. Pete, it happened _so fast_ with you. It was like fuckin’ whiplash. I went from their me to… _me_ me. Only _me_ me was a total stranger who was talking nonsense that only you understood.”

Peter sat up suddenly. His heart was hammering the way it always did when he got a huge idea. “Okay… okay but… ok but **_what if_** _…_ we… left? If we got away from… from _them?_ I wasn’t keen on you taking me on a lot of expensive trips — it felt too much like letting you buy me a car —” 

“Which I’m doing.”

 _“…we’ll see_ — but I could _let_ you take me to all those places that you said? Paris and all those places? And Italy? If we had time alone on the plane, and then were really somewhere where _they_ couldn’t call you, short of a thermonuclear event, then… if being together and talking like that requires days to recover from… We’ll have _days_. We’ll be together. And I won’t complain that you’re spending all that money on me.”

“I want to spend days and days away somewhere with you. To take you to all those places. But first to Italy. That’s _home._ Long Island was Howard’s house. Italy was home. My nonna’s house is there.” He smiled tenderly and took Peter’s hand. “Pete, don’t you realize that when I say I want the everything of you… I want you to have the everything of me too.”

“Oh god, I want that,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “That’s why it got so damn hard every time you had to take off and we didn’t even get to have breakfast in the morning. You’d leave, and then I’d get a present in the mail, and I’d be like ‘Oh here is another reasonably-priced object, but all I really wanted was two scrambled eggs’. Hell I didn’t even want you to make me an omelette. I just wanted a _morning_ together. 

“And yell at me as much as you want for worrying about your physical body, but I don’t see you for weeks at a time how am I supposed to know if you’re okay? I know when you sleep beside me that you slept. I know that you had a nightmare because I was there when you woke up from the… holy shit…”

Peter turned his head, his mouth helplessly gaping.

“Damn. I think now I know what you were monitoring my phone…”

“I monitored your phone to _see_ you.

“What you want is what I want. Seeing you _here._ Wake up to have breakfast together, sit here and talk about whatever. Class and work would still be in our lives, but in a balance that keeps **_us_ ** as the top priority. I’d be _with_ you and not watching you. Life, Pete. That’s what I want with you. A whole life.” Tony hesitated. “For a whole lifetime.”

Peter laid his head on the side of the couch and looked into Tony’s face peacefully. 

He had more information, now, about Tony than he ever had, information he didn’t know existed and that was very, very good. (Tony felt terror? Tony felt vulnerable? That was a _thing?)_

“Okay, then I’m sorry I mistook your full disclosure as a symptom of a disrupted amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connection. If you’re sure it was the result of terror, then that throws a wrench in my theory. Because I’ll _never_ scare you on purpose.

“And I _am_ sorry I scared you,” he said softly, “but in my defense you were literally looking _into my head,_ into my private thoughts. If you don’t want to be terrified maybe you shouldn’t be looking into my head so much.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d be amazed what kind of crazy shit goes on up in here.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have scared the shit out of you too by doing something no one should be _able_ to do and I shouldn’t be _willing_ to do. I’m not willing to do it anymore.”

Peter started.

Then he sighed. It was a contented sigh. It was a sigh of a man who had gotten something he didn’t think possible.

Tony had just the forbidden _‘s word ’,_ had said it casually, and that was _everything._ He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He even leaned in and put his nose close to Tony’s shoulder and breathed in again.

“What are you doing?” 

“You just apologized, and I don’t even think you know you did it. Right now I’m trying to memorize this pheromone signature. I want to know what you smell like when you say _“I’m sorry.”_ That way I’ll know when you’re thinking it, even if you don’t say it.”

He looked up into Tony’s face with a grin to let him know that he was kidding. Mostly. “Thank you.”

“Pete, that’s… okay this is weird… but that’s probably one of the most romantic things anyone’s ever done.” Tony smiled softly. He couldn’t believe that Peter wanted the _everything_ of him too. Even something as odd as that.

“It’s weird, yeah. I’m weird. Look, I said I wanted you to be normal, and you said you have never been normal. And who am I to judge — I literally spent last week walking on my hands all over the rooftops of New York just to see how long I could keep it up. I play video games upside down with my feet webbed to your ceiling just to keep them interesting. I do my Advanced Calculus homework on my laptop while balancing on my right hand for the same reason. Who am I to say what is normal? Neither one of us can go back and change what happened to our fifteen-year-old-selves. So let’s forget about it. Let’s just figure out what we _want to do.”_

“Normal for us will _never look_ normal to anyone else. But there are things that both of us need to be able to _approach the realm_ of normality with.”

“Good. Now I have to say I’m s… I’m going to say those _meaningless_ words too now, so shut up and let me — I’m **_sorry_ ** about… destroying your trousers last night. And _don’t_ tell me about how you can afford them because that’s not the point. Last night I… scared myself. There are some… things we should talk about. Later. Because there’s something else I need to tell you right now.

“After I do this.” he whispered and leaned over and kissed Tony softly on the mouth.

“Peter,” Tony said quietly once they broke their kiss. Which… god… he thought he would never be kissed by Peter again. “I meant what I said in my text. You are the most important person in my life. So I’m going to be here. When you’re ready to talk about whatever. Because I want to know. Even when I was spying on you, I never knew what was going on with you. I want to do this together. Put our metaphorical baggage on the bed after a long trip and… maybe show each other a little bit at a time what’s inside it.” He smiled and shook his head. “I am _so good_ at this making sense business,” he said rolling his eyes.

“You’re making perfect sense.”

“But the trousers thing…” 

“You should probably shut up now, Tony.”

Tony laughed quietly. “Yeah. I should. I’m not good at that. Might need a reminder occasionally.”

Peter leaned over and kissed him on the mouth again, but this time he didn’t pull away. It was time to commit. So he darted his tongue out to touch Tony’s lips, waiting for Tony to deepen the kiss. When he did, Peter climbed into the man’s lap and started kissing in earnest.

Only to pull back, sharply, blinking.

“Wait… wait… the ‘big guns’ is a _threat,_ isn’t it? Tony, I’ll _never_ threaten you with something I don’t mean. Ben and May never did that to me, except sometimes with ‘Santa isn’t coming’ and even when I was little I thought that was stupid. Because… how are you going to contact him now? He’s already in transit! 

“And I never… I couldn’t send those texts to you because _they weren’t honest._ I kept trying to _fix_ them until they were honest until I had to just _stop_ because I realized none of it was true. And telling _you_ the truth is… kind of a thing for me.”

“The only time I’ve…,” Tony took a long blink, “…been that scared — yeah, I was scared after the wormhole — but there are only two times in my life I’ve been _terrified._ Waking up to…” It was hard to say, even after all these years. He tapped his arc reactor lightly. “What was here before. The other time? When I read those messages you left unsent.”

There wasn’t much Peter could say to that, so he was satisfied to put his forehead to Tony’s forehead, and leave it there.

“I deleted them because I knew then, and I knew last night, I’m not leaving you,” he whispered. “Things have to change. Because we’re the World’s Best Defenders and we have to be right with each other or else the World is seriously screwed. We can fix it. We’ll nanotech it to death if we have to, but we’ll _fix_ it. Because leaving you was never an option; I realized that the one time I tried. And those unsent messages were just me shouting into the darkness. Saying the bad words out loud so I could prove I was a grown-up.

“And I told you then — I told you I’d be staying, and right then I wasn’t happy about it. But we can get to that place… I _know_ we can get to a place… even if we have to have all our conversations in the lab so we know we’re both speaking literally… we can get there.

“But right now… there’s something else. I have a confession to make. It’s… kind of a big deal.

“And we have to be naked for that to happen.”


	6. Homework

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can we do this right here?” Peter whispered. “It’s kind of important.”

Peter was in his lap. Peter was saying that he wasn’t going to leave. And better than him just _saying_ that, it felt like the coin had actually dropped and landed on the right side of the decision. It felt _real._ Peter was in his arms and kissing him. “I went to bed knowing for certain that I’d never kiss you again.”

“Well, that just makes you a moron,” Peter said as gently as he could. He pressed his lips to Tony’s and darted out his tongue — he knew Tony liked that — and tried to initiate the kissing again. There were very specific topics he wanted to discuss and the _only_ way he could talk about them was naked. And being naked on the couch, this _specific_ couch, in this specific spot? Vitally important.

Whenever Peter kissed him… He had to let Peter know how much… how much Peter _wanting_ him meant. He couldn’t _help_ but let Peter know. Even if he tried, his body wouldn’t let him hide it. He couldn’t hold in that moan or that gasp or the way his hands settled around Peter’s waist or any of it. To know that he was the one wanted, rather than that he was the one wanting? When Peter kissed _him?_ He had to hold onto that forever and make it his. 

Obsessed? He could… he _could_ get rid of that. Possessive? That was too essential a part of who he was. One hand slid up from Peter’s waist to splay between his shoulder blades and draw him into a deeper kiss. He wanted to own every single one of Peter’s kisses. But he also wanted Peter to own every single one of his. 

He took that deeper kiss and broke it, only for a second, before beginning it again. Then, he broke their kiss completely and leaned back to look into Peter’s face. Tony was still uncertain what Peter actually wanted.

“Can we do this right here?” Peter whispered. “It’s kind of important.”

“Baby, we can do this wherever you want. This sofa?” Tony smiled softly. That was a great memory. Peter was going back to it. Starting over. Rewriting good memories over the bad ones from the past few months. “Yeah. Right here is _very_ good.” 

Peter took Tony’s hands and put them on his shirt, guiding him to take it off. Getting out of his pants took more effort, of course, but he managed to kiss the man and remove them at the same time. (It was a good thing, being graceful.) 

Tony had far less of Peter’s gracefulness. Fortunately all he was wearing was what Peter dressed him in: a pair of boxers. Even so, it did take getting Peter to raise up off his lap for just a moment, but only for just a moment, before his boxers joined Peter’s clothes on the floor. 

Peter moaned and spread his legs wider, moving his cock to lay beside Tony’s to where he could catch them both up in one hand and hold them together, but when Tony tried to help he took both of Tony’s hands and put them on this face.

Tony held his face and kissed him deeply, but when he didn’t move his hands from there Peter tried again, taking Tony’s hands and moving them downward, to his neck, and then to his chest. “Touch me, please,” he said. He realized he sounded a little desperate. He wasn’t really sure how to describe _what_ he needed, he just knew he needed it. 

Tony let his hands wander over Peter’s skin. Over his back. Moving one to catch against the back of his neck while his other _touched._ He caressed down Peter’s arm, feeling the strength there. Long, lean muscles that could take an over ninety story drop. His hands wandered down Peter’s sides, down to the sharp angle of his hips. Over his thighs… those beautiful long legs that were spread around his. Then back up his body — he hadn’t felt like this with Peter in _far_ too long — wanting to possess every square inch of him with his touch. A shuddering moan escaped him and he was powerless to stop it. He needed to touch as much as Peter needed to _be_ touched. 

He held Peter’s neck and pulled him forward, hesitantly, seeing if he would follow and be drawn into another kiss. He could tell that Peter needed some control tonight. He was happy to give himself over. But god… resisting Peter’s lips… that took more than he had.

Peter moaned into the kiss, and kissed back in return. But when Tony’s hands finally stopped moving, he pulled back long enough to speak.

“Do that again.”

Tony smiled. Peter asked that often. They would find something that _worked_. And he wanted it to work again. “Kiss or touch? Because both? Yeah… that again.”

He brought Peter into another kiss, but felt him break it softly and move to nestle his face in the crook of his neck. Tony give a groaning sigh when Peter’s chest pressed briefly against Tony’s arc reactor. Then they settled comfortably a few inches apart, and Peter looked down between their bodies.

Peter’s hand gently stroked their cocks, side by side, but without urgency, while Tony ran his hands over legs, back and shoulders. 

During their rushed nights, Tony would be reaching for Peter’s ass, seeking to move things along so they would get a few hours sleep before heading out the door. There would be no heading out the door. There would be no call. If FRIDAY broke through for anything less than an invading army of Chitauri, he’d have her parts. Peter didn’t want Tony to just ‘fuck his ass’. Tony didn’t want that either. He wanted _this._ He wanted to touch and kiss Peter forever. He wanted to feel them moving slowly against each other, letting things build at a more intimate pace. He had spent a night in hell and had come out of it to find heaven.

In the safety of Tony’s embrace, Peter moaned against his neck and pressed kisses into the skin where he could reach. “I missed you,” he whispered. He let go of his own shaft and wrapped his fingers around Tony’s, stroking him hard. Tony’s hands were amazing, but they wouldn’t have to stop when he started riding… 

They would have to stop, unfortunately, for the lube. Peter swore quietly as he sat up and looked around — dammit the bedroom was so damn far away! He put his forehead to Tony’s forehead. 

“I have to go get something — _do not move from_ **_this_ ** _spot._ And while I’m gone I need you to think about something.

“Do you remember the _first_ time I rode your cock on _this_ sofa, in this room?

“Baby, those _first_ times? They’re _hardwired._ Every single one of them.”

Peter grinned. “Okay, homework then — think about _that_ first time. I’ll be right back.”

Tony was good at homework, but not when there was an absolutely adorable ass dashing out of the living room. Once that ass was out of sight, he remembered the morning after their first night together. That first night… Tony had been completely _gone_ because he’d been wanting Peter for so long. He hadn’t been sure before they started, but as soon as they had, he knew. That was Peter’s first time _ever._ Not just his first time with him. Tony wanted to be so much more gentle than he was. But his body had entirely different ideas about it. His body won.

The next morning, Peter led him to this exact sofa. To this exact spot on it. He was shy, but determined, as he took Tony’s cock in his hand and said, “‘From _here_ to _here’,_ (he indicated the first seven inches or so), ‘feels great’,” he explained. “It’s from _here_ to _here’_ (he indicated the inches at the base), ‘where it gets… weird. So I was wondering…’”

It was amazing that a kid with zero experience with another person was able to express himself clearly. Even moreso since the night before Peter had been unable to say anything but ‘ohgodTony’ (which was absolutely adorable.) Most inexperienced lovers were simply willing to be impressed by him. Or, if they were anything else, Tony didn’t give enough of a damn to pay attention. There were _a lot_ of those. He wanted nothing _but_ to pay attention to Peter. He hadn’t that night before. While the kid had no comparison, Tony did. He knew he’d fucked up. He was hoping to get a do-over the next morning. He was delighted that Peter wanted the same. Or so he thought.

Tony wasn’t expecting the do-over to be something that Peter was… not exactly controlling… but _communicating_ his own desires about. Every virgin he’d ever fucked couldn’t express anything beyond, ‘please get rid of this pesky virginity of mine’. Which, doing so was something to which Tony wasn’t averse. But every one of those virgins left immediately after it was done. (Which was also something to which Tony wasn’t averse.) 

Neither he nor Peter wanted that. ‘Repeated times’, were mentioned by them both. Those repeated times meant figuring out what felt good, not just what got ‘the deed’ done. Meant being able to talk about it. Meant that — and this was something that he hadn’t had with **_any_** of his partners, whether they were one night stands or repeated times — it wasn’t just bodies that were engaged. It was minds as well.

‘I missed you’, Peter said. That was the reason behind all of the spying he ever did to anyone. What he got with it never made up for the ‘I missed you’ part. He realized that he and Peter had become a couple, but Tony hadn’t been able to _keep_ his life changed because of it. There was a _why_ there, but he couldn’t quite figure it out.

He’d figure it out later. When he didn’t have something much better to think about. The fact that Peter would be back soon. Would be back in his lap, back in his arms riding him, but also touching him and kissing him. _And they’d have time._ Whatever reason had been holding him back from changing his life, it was gone.

Lube in hand, Peter dashed across the room and back into Tony’s lap. It wasn’t like this was the first time he had dashed around nude in one of Tony’s multiple residences — in fact that happened quite often — but being nude in the penthouse just felt silly. It was the massive windows. Not that there was anyone who could be looking in those windows — it was the third tallest building in New York obviously — but still, Peter dashed. Zipped across the room and back into the safety of Tony’s arms. 

“Did you do your homework?” he grinned as he climbed back into position and slipped the lube into Tony’s hands. 

“Yes Professor Parker,” Tony grinned back.

“And what do you remember?”

“I remember that I was amazed that, for being inexperienced, you were so communicative. I remember that with you, it was something more than just… bodies. I remember that I fucked up your first time, but I didn’t fuck up your second. I remember what a unique experience it was having — god I really have to do something about my inability to make sense whenever you’re around — having… What I remember most is that you were the first person out of any of my partners, and I do mean _any,_ where it wasn’t just our bodies in the room, it was our minds.

“Oh. And I remember one other thing… I really liked it when you ‘run the fuck’ sometimes. I liked it a lot.” Tony smiled.

Peter grinned like a fool and ducked his head a little. “Oh… well… that’s too bad for you because you’re the one holding the lube," he said as he slipped the lube into Tony's hand, giving it a little push.

Tony slicked his fingers and opened Peter gently. It had, after all, been more than six weeks and he only had himself to blame. Besides, feeling Peter respond was worth taking his time. He enjoyed watching Peter’s eyes flutter close as his fingers worked their magic. ‘You finger better than some men fuck’, Peter once told him. ‘How would you know?’ Tony asked. ‘I watch porn’, was the obvious answer.

“Do this for me,” Peter said gently, taking Tony’s hand and guiding it to the base of the man’s shaft. “Please?” He asked, taking Tony’s fingers and wrapping it around the base, and Tony obeyed. That was probably the least-favorite of his favorite positions, since he couldn’t move (because Peter had to be in control) and he wouldn’t be able to come that way, but he could never deny that Peter enjoyed it, and he enjoyed watching Peter enjoy it. 

Still, he leaned forward and kissed the center of Peter’s chest. “That okay? Cos… you had this one line of sweat running down your chest and… my tongue couldn't resist.” He leaned back on the sofa and let Peter do what he wanted again.


	7. Their second time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter watched Tony’s eyes carefully as he continued to move. He let it go on for a few more moments before he leaned in and, laying his lips against Tony’s ear, whispered “Do you know why I do this?”

Tony remembered. Their second time, he was indulgent. He realized that the night before, he took far too much too soon. That was, for all Peter’s protestations, his very first time. What should’ve taken _hours,_ or at least felt like it, Tony rushed. He’d gotten what he needed. Peter, not so much, whatever he said. He got the grace of a do-over. That time it was all about Peter. It was thrilling to watch him know what he wanted and take it. Admittedly, it wasn’t directly doing much for him… except it was. Peter was beautiful. He was riding his cock, sitting in his lap, where Tony could _watch_ every movement, every ripple of the boy’s muscles, watch every expression on his face, listen to every sound. He wasn’t distracted by his own need. He was too busy enjoying Peter’s.

Peter had guided Tony’s hand to his own shaft, showing him how to wrap his fingers around the last inches, the rejected inches, at the base. From there Peter had taken over, lowering himself easily onto the rest of Tony’s cock.

From his seat on the couch Tony watched Peter _enjoy_ himself. With his other hand at the small of Peter’s back he watched the boy’s face as Peter, eyes closed and mouth half-open, rode Tony exactly as he wanted, taking it in at his own pace. For several minutes there was nothing else. No sounds, no words. Only Peter, eyes closed, concentrating on taking in Tony’s cock.

Then he began bottoming out on Tony’s hand.

Then he began _grinding_ down on Tony’s hand.

Then he took Tony’s wrist in hand and pulled it away.

With Tony’s hand in his grip and Tony’s other hand on the small of his back they looked, absurdly, like dancers. Sometimes Peter looked down into Tony’s eyes in surprise (but most of the time he hid behind closed eyes) as he took in the rest, centimeter by centimeter. 

Tony watched him wince and hiss and moan as he pushed himself, opening himself up on his lover’s cock. He remembered his first time trying to handle… okay… someone who put _him_ to shame. It had been a different position, and he wasn’t a virgin, but he remembered how _gentle_ Rhodey had been. There was discomfort, but there was also an incredible pleasure because it just went on and on and he felt so filled… which… was awkward, sure, but because he was so infatuated with his two-years-older roommate, being filled and overwhelmed by him made the bridge between pain and pleasure. Until all that was left was pleasure. And he was watching Peter do it to himself. 

“That’s it, Pete. God you’re beautiful. I love watching you… make yourself feel good. It’s… wow. It’s amazing. Go on. Take your time. Give yourself more when you’re ready. Cos I’m… I’m kinda enjoying the view,” he said, smiling up at Peter tenderly. Peter only whimpered in response. 

He waited and watched until Peter seemed close but couldn’t quite come on his own. Pulling his hand away from the small of Peter’s back, Tony wrapped his hand around Peter’s cock and began stroking it. The kid’s eyes closed. He turned his head away and moaned. Tony knew he would be burying his head in Tony’s neck soon… taking comfort in him the same way he took it from his touch the night before. In his neck, Peter felt safe. 

Tony thought himself far from his own completion. It was pleasant having Peter ride him, but a little too gentle and too shallow. He didn’t mind. He was enjoying lots of other things in this position. He was just about to remind himself that he didn’t need to come for sex to be good. There’d been times when he just couldn’t get there, but they were still enjoyable times. 

And then Peter began grinding down onto the last centimeter of Tony’s cock.

He gave out a little yelp of surprise when he felt his thighs touching Tony’s body and he hid his face in Tony’s neck, panting. He let go of Tony’s wrist and shoulder and tucked his hands under his chin, refusing to pull up his head. 

Tony wrapped his arms around Peter. Holding him close, not letting him go, keeping him safe as he moved on him, letting the boy make himself feel good. 

He had Peter in his arms… _alive._ Something he thought he’d never have. From the brief moment they hugged on the battlefield, and he looked toward a heaven he didn’t believe in in thanks, he knew that there was only one thing he wanted. He’d wait and maybe, if he was infinitely lucky, he’d have what he longed for. Then _he_ was the one who died and he saw Peter fading from his vision. But Peter hadn’t let him _stay_ dead. So he did the right thing and kept away while the kid outgrew his crush. 

And the wild emotional ride finally ended. Finally ended with Peter _HERE_ in his arms… The release of _all that_ caused a release of another sort. 

“Fuck…” he muttered as his body tensed. “Oh fuck Pete.” He wrapped his arms around the kid’s back and held on tightly as he came. “Baby…” he sighed as his racing heart and heavy breaths stilled. 

There was no way to explain what just happened to a kid with absolutely no experience. That was something that he figured could only happen with someone he loved. Only… it had never happened before. Which meant he had never… That was something to analyze another day.

When it was over, Tony had bruises on his wrist and shoulder where Peter’s hands had dug in.

They separated and leaned back from each other. Tony reached out to touch Peter again. That’s when he noticed the bright blue-purple marks around his wrist. “My spider.” He smiled. “Told you you wouldn’t break anything you didn’t want to.”

~~~~~

Tonight’s Peter, this Peter, slid down more easily, of course. He had been taking Tony’s shaft without complaint for a year now, and within moments he had worked his way down to Tony’s hand. He wasn’t shy anymore; he looked Tony in the eye as he rode, sometimes moving in for a kiss, sometimes touching their foreheads together.

“No, not yet,” he gasped, grabbing Tony’s wrist and keeping it in place. He had been bottoming out on Tony’s hand for a while, but would not let Tony move it. He laid his head back for a few moments and let Tony watch him moan as he enjoyed himself. He knew Tony liked to watch.

Then he opened his eyes.

“Do you like it?”

“Like what?” Tony asked.

“Like this?”

“You riding me? Yes. I like it,” Tony smiled. “It’s nice _different_ than it is in other ways.” There were ways in which this always was a little less satisfying than other positions. But what was satisfying, _very_ satisfying, was that this was something Peter wanted to do. Plus, watching Peter was something he couldn’t ever get enough of. 

Peter watched Tony’s eyes carefully as he continued to move. He let it go on for a few more moments before he leaned in and, laying his lips against Tony’s ear, whispered “Do you know why I do this?” 

“To be more in control of the experience and the sensations you’re getting?” It’s what Tony always assumed when Peter chose this position over others. 

But Peter shook his head no. _“This_ is mine,” he explained. “I can do _this_ to myself whenever I want. Whenever you’re gone for too long and I’m waiting for you to come back. I can do _this_ to myself. With those toys I’m never going to let you see. _This_ is exactly how long they are — I can make myself feel _this_ way whenever I want to.

 _“_ But _this…”_ Peter growled, jerking Tony’s hand away by the wrist and slamming himself down into Tony’s lap.

“This is _only for_ **_you_** _.”_

“Then you won’t mind if I _take_ it.” Tony’s hands dropped to Peter’s hips. They wouldn’t leave bruises on his unbreakable boy, but he held hard enough that he would _feel_ it. He started to drive up into Peter. 

“Cos baby…” He grabbed harder, fought to take back the control he always let Peter have in this position. “I’ve given up every single bit of your digital ghost. I don’t want it. I don’t need it.” 

Peter was moved — stunned, helpless, eyes wide — on Tony’s cock as the man pounded up into him.

“But if you think that I’m gonna give **_you_ ** up…” Tony growled. He drove into Peter with every one of those inches he couldn’t get on his own. “If you don’t think you’re still **_mine…”_ ** As he felt Peter shudder, Tony was fighting to hold on. He leaned in and bit Peter’s neck, then dragged his teeth along it until he was mouthing at the corner of Peter’s jaw. “You are **_very_ **fuckin’ wrong.” 

There were times, most actually, when Tony was in complete control. Peter was right there with him, once he got used to the whole sex thing. But they both liked things that way, with Tony leading things. Except in this position. This was when Tony let go of the control he had at other times. He sat back and watched, delighted, as Peter took his pleasure however he wanted it. In the past, with other people, things had been very different in this position. There had been times with Peter that he wanted that difference. He liked that Peter wanted to take control sometimes. But god, sometimes when the kid was achingly beautiful on top of him, lost in pleasure, moaning, panting, just like now… it was everything Tony had not to _take._

Tony wrapped his arms around Peter, one holding his chest, one around his waist. Keeping him immobile, not letting him ride. Peter could break his hold easily, but he didn’t. He held on to Tony’s neck and let himself be moved. Hard and fast and _deep._ What he couldn’t give himself. What he wanted. What he missed when Tony was away. 

“God Pete,” Tony groaned. “Fuck…” He pulled Peter closer, dragged his mouth over his chest, tasting the sweat there, tasting him. “Missed you…” He let his stroke slow, each time grinding against his ass, the full length of him inside. “Baby… I don’t… _need_ anything.” He pulled back, nearly all the way out. “Just you.” He slumped down the sofa just a little and raised his hips while he held Peter in the same place on the end of his cock. When he thrust again he moved even slower. The head dragged along his prostate as he entered. Peter long ago stopped having any complaints about the size of Tony’s cock. Nor did he have any complaints about the fact that Tony knew how to use it. He let it build as he entered, filling Peter, opening him, pressing down against the stimulation. 

Peter buried his face in Tony’s neck the way he’d long since outgrown. His panting was broken by gasps and whimpers, then by moans and cries. 

Each time, he went a little faster, a little harder, moving in the same way. He was so close, but even though he was in control, this position was always about Peter’s pleasure first. “I missed you so much.” He kissed Peter’s shoulder as he listened to Peter’s cries. “That’s it baby. That’s it. I got you.” Tony’s hands wandered over Peter’s back. Touching. Feeling the boy… the man… he thought he’d lost forever. Who walked out and dropped and flew away from him. “Baby…” he moaned as he mouthed along Peter’s shoulder to the back of his neck. “God Pete, yes. C’mon baby. Right here… gimme a new memory… let me… give you one…” He grunted deeply, forcing himself to hold out. “I am _never…_ getting rid… of this damn sofa… I swear to fuckin’ god… C’mon baby. Make me messy.”

Peter hid his face. His eyes were wide. Tony had _never_ moved when they were in this position — and now Peter knew why. This was _nothing_ like being underneath Tony, nothing at all. Normally by now he would be stroking his own cock but it wasn’t possible, he didn’t have a hand free. He was holding onto Tony tightly and couldn’t possibly let go.

The sensation was incredible. He tried to say so but he would have to catch his breath first and besides he had forgotten how to make words. His brain wasn’t helping. Even Tony’s name wasn’t coming out despite this embarrassing amount of noise.

And then he came.

It was like a scene straight out of a PornHub video, Peter thought (and would have said, if he had been able to speak. Or move. Or think.) He was coming completely untouched. It seemed important, and Peter would certainly make note of it. But for the time being all he could really focus on was _not_ leaving bruises on Tony’s shoulders. His fingers were digging in for dear life. And Tony, of course, was still fucking him. 

There was something about fucking his very oversensitive Peter right through his orgasm. Something very _possessive._ He could change a lot about their relationship… but that was unchangeable. He moaned as he began to move slowly. “Mine, baby.”

“Yours… yes… _yours Tony…_ ” 

When he felt Peter start to come down, he sank himself… _all_ of himself… in Peter. He held on tight… almost too tight, as always, but he _had_ to. Tony shuddered so hard that, if he’d been the one bitten by the spider, he would’ve lifted them right off the sofa like Peter did their bed his first time. Peter had been able to sometimes make him come in this position… but _never_ like this. 

Even after the quakes passed through him, he still couldn’t let go yet. Not this time. When he’d almost lost… everything. _He_ was the one burying his face into the crook of a safe warm neck. 

His hold finally loosened and he soothed Peter’s back with his hands where he’d held him. He kissed the boy’s shoulder. “I love you, Peter.” His lips moved over soft skin. “Probably way more than I should.” He slid back up and sat properly on the sofa, with Peter sitting in his lap, still with his softening cock inside him — and wasn’t that just the most wonderful sensation ever? — Tony brushed Peter’s hair from his forehead. “I don’t know any other way to love you, baby. Only way too much.”

Peter wanted to speak, but at the moment he could only concentrate on breathing, holding on to Tony’s shoulders and maybe wiping his tears away without Tony noticing. He _wanted_ to say something, something in answer to what Tony had just said, but he knew it wouldn’t be good enough.

“Oh fuck Tony I love you so fucking much,” he whispered, then gave up. So he combed his fingers through Tony’s hair and pressed closer. He couldn’t communicate after coming his brains out — Tony should know that by now.


	8. My virgin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We can do this. We can work together to find something… not normal, but something. Something that works for both of us.”

Peter was still sitting on Tony’s lap, his hands stroking Tony’s hair, his head in his favorite hiding place, when he took a deep breath and tried his best to explain. 

“What I wanted to tell you was… you told me that you were a ‘shit lover’ and I guess I wanted to argue the point. What I remember about that first night — you were so gentle that first night — and then the next day you _apologized_ for not being gentle _enough_ and I never understood why, because I thought you were amazing. But I realize now…”

His fingers traced over Tony’s shoulder, looking for bruises. Tony said he didn’t mind those fingertip-sized purple spots when they appeared, but they gave Peter the shivers. 

“Damn, this is harder than I thought. So… I only lied to you once, once we got together. I mean I lied more than once, but it was only about that one thing. I never lied to you again _after_ that, Tony. And I don’t know _why_ I lied… it seems so ridiculous to me now. Because you did everything to make me feel safe that night. But I still didn’t tell you.”

He lifted his head up from Tony’s neck to look around the room.

“That chair, there's the first place you sat when you gave me my first lesson on how to go down on you, but that wasn’t the first time I had gone down on a guy.

“This sofa, this was the first time I ever rode a guy. And I told you that.

“And in there, in the bedroom, that was the first time I… oh god this is stupid…” He hid in Tony’s neck again. 

“That _was_ my first time. And I guess you always knew that. And if you thought… if you did something wrong, you didn’t. You did everything to make me feel safe, and I _did_ feel safe, I was just… proud. Too proud to just come out and admit it. And I’m sorry I never told you.

“There,” Peter said, putting his hand down on Tony’s shoulder, covering any bruises that he didn’t want to see. “That’s it.”

“I can tell when there’s a virgin in my bed. But baby, it was so important to you not to tell me that I played along. I figured that the next day, voila!, not a virgin anymore, doesn’t matter anymore. So you ‘lied’ about it. All guys your age lie about how much sexual experience they have. Especially when they’re with a more experienced lover. It’s a cliché, not a lie.

“When I said I hadn’t been gentle _enough…_ that’s because you were **_my_ ** _virgin._ I’ve been with fair amount of them. But you were _mine._ It was supposed to be all about you. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t all about me — I’ve never been like that with anyone inexperienced — but I knew. I knew the way I _should've_ been with you your first time and I wasn’t. There was no excuse. But I was _so overwhelmed_ by finally having you in my bed… Peter, I wanted you so long… not, like, _inappropriately_ long, you were legal age when you came back… at least here in New York,” he added, smiling. “I was making myself give you time to get over your crush, but I _wanted_ you that entire time. So when I finally got you… got to touch you… had you kiss me… my body kinda had other ideas about what to do instead of taking proper care of _my virgin._ That’s what I meant by it.”

Peter glowed from head to foot. He didn’t want to hide his head again, but it was difficult not to. ‘My virgin’ certainly would have irritated him to no end, a year ago. Now it just made him feel warm down to his toes.

“Baby, you know I have a thing about lies… but you didn’t lie. You’ve never lied to me. You just kinda…,” he smiled again, “…prevaricated.

“About me being a ‘shit lover’? That wasn’t about in bed. What I meant is that I’ve been a shit lover about being here. Someone who’s your lover needs to be here for you when you need him.”

“So… I guess what I need to say is, I’m glad you knew. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to… god I don’t know if this is stupid or not but…”

He started to move his head into that safe place in Tony’s neck, but then he forced himself to back up. He looked directly into Tony’s eyes and whispered.

“I _like_ it, Tony. 

“I like that no one else has touched me. And I like it that you _know._

“And this may be hard to explain, but…”

Peter gave up the battle and tucked his head in Tony’s neck after all.

“When I was sitting on the rooftop in the middle of the night texting you? When I wrote “I don’t want to be this thing that no one has ever touched in your trophy case? After I typed that I realized — I was lying. And I didn’t want to lie to you. 

“Because I _like_ it Tony. I _like_ being there. I like being yours. I said last night that I was staying with you and I didn’t like it. **_But I am staying_** — I _like_ it here in your trophy case. And I know we can… we can move things around in here so it won’t be so lonely inside.”

“What about a treasure in my _life._ Not in a trophy case. It’s no better from the outside looking it than it is from the inside looking out. What I want… what… god… what I’ve wanted for so long… is you in my life. _All_ of my life. I want to be a part of your life. All of your life.” Tony bit his lips, staring into uncharted territory. Afraid he didn’t even have words to reference what he wanted. “I don’t want there to be a my life and a your life. I want there to be an _our_ life. Only…” He blinked and took a deep breath. “I don’t know how that works. Not where… we _both_ want to be there. I don’t…” He shrugged. “I guess that’s one of the ‘our kind of normal’ things we have to figure out 

Peter wrapped his arms around Tony’s shoulders and held on tight.

“Yes, Tony. God yes.”

Peter took Tony’s face in his hands and kissed him hard. There were more tears, but he didn’t try to hide them this time.

Although he did wipe a few away when he spoke again.

“Okay, so here’s the other thing, and I know this isn’t going to make any sense. But here it is.

“Last night when I went to bed and I thought about it I… I was very _angry_ last night, and the stupid part was I realized why.

“Because you’ve apparently been obsessed with me _all this time_ , and as amazing as it is to be the subject of your obsession, it was pretty fucked up that I didn’t even know it. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be as fascinated with me as I was fascinated with you, well, that and to see you more than once a month and have time to talk and have more time for talking-after-sex but you see what I mean. And to know that you were fascinated with me… I mean it pissed me off that you were spying on my friends without their knowledge and that’s not okay but… damn Tony. This is fucked up in so many ways. _I want you,_ I _want_ your constant attention, I do. I kind of _need_ it. More than I want to admit. So now I don’t even know what to tell you — I don’t want to spy on your phone like you said, I want to know what you’re doing in the normal way. But I… I don’t want to give up Karen. The suit, that’s different, that’s complicated and we can get into it later. But I still need Karen as an option. Because I talk to myself, I talk to myself _constantly_ when I’m patrolling, Tony.” He leaned forward until their foreheads were touching.

“I talk to myself because there’s a chance _you might be listening_.”

Tony leaned up to kiss Peter lightly. “If you want to talk to me when you’re in the suit, you’re going to have to _talk to me._ If I’m not available — which will be rare — tell Karen to talk to FRIDAY. They talk all the time already. I can write something where the girls are more communicative about their gossip with both of us.” 

Tony paused. He knew what he wanted. And he knew what was keeping it from him. And that would not stand. 

“You were taken from me and **_I let it happen._ ** I’m not letting anyone take you from me ever again.” Tony settled Peter more solidly onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around him, pulling him tightly against him. He wanted to hold him close. Keep him close. Refuse to ever let go no matter who or what wanted him to. “The… spying? No!” Tony nearly growled with the resolution of it. “I **_will not allow_ ** anyone to take **_you_ **away from me ever again.

“I want _you._ I want to call you and talk to you and then if we have something else to do, just leave the connection open and follow me around. You’ll know I’m there and I’ll know you’re there. I want to text more. Not long intense conversations, just bullshitting around. Even if you give me permission to ‘spy’ through Karen. I won’t do it. Karen is yours. FRIDAY is mine. And they’re very personal. They see things about us that, worse than spying, no one should be able to see. I can’t afford to keep things from FRIDAY. I need her to be there to save my life if it comes to it. You need to trust Karen that much.

“You’re my obsession. _Fascination._ I thought you knew. Baby, how many times have I told you that your life is a complete mystery to me? I have no idea how the normal world works. I’ve _never_ been a part of it. Not even the normal world for someone else… who is also not normal. 

“Baby, there isn’t a single part of your life I don’t want to be a part of, if you’ll have me in it. I worry that you’ll feel like a spider under my microscope, that I’m living vicariously through you, but that’s not what it is. It’s not just _any_ normal person whose life I want to know about, it’s very specifically _yours. You_ fascinate me.”

Peter ducked his head into Tony’s shoulder, nuzzling his neck. He hoped it would hide the fact that he was grinning from ear to ear. 

“This is good, this is progress,” he whispered, too overwhelmed to say more. So instead he snuggled into Tony’s embrace, kissed the skin he could reach, and relaxed. “We can do this. We can work together to find something… not _normal_ , but something. Something that works for both of us.” 

He sighed and tangled his fingers in his lover’s hair. “I love you, but you don’t like the way I show it. And you love me and I couldn’t see how you were showing it. But dammit, we’re both smart people. 

“We’ll figure it out.”


	9. New Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter’s eyes went wide. His mouth was closed tight. He was afraid to breathe, afraid Ms. Potts would hear him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This brings us to the end of Book 3 "Tomorrow".
> 
> Unfortunately, your authors need a bit of a working hiatus before Book 4 is ready for posting. We have the middle, and the end, but not the beginning completed. So we have to knock that into shape. 
> 
> Sunday February 16 and Thursday February 20, 2020, will be skipped from our usual posting schedule. **We will resume posting on Sunday February 23, 2020** with Book 4 "My Virgin (revisited)". There are 7 Books to the series; much of them is already completed. This WIP is not going to be abandoned. Life just kept us from being able to have everything ready in time.

They were actually dozing. At least Tony was dozing and Peter was laying his head beside him, watching his sleeping face in amazement. They held each other on the couch in the daylit room, each unwilling to let the other go. Peter was actually dozing off himself when FRIDAY’s voice was heard overhead. 

FRIDAY’s voice did not startle Peter — he was certainly used to that voice. But the _name_ she said made his eyes go wide.

“Boss, I have a priority call from Ms. Potts, she’s overriding the protocols you gave me last night.”

Peter started and hid his face in Tony’s shoulder. Tony hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep. They were naked on the sofa. Peter was still in his lap. They were holding each other. They were doing that thing they never had time for. The post sex afterglow, the post sex open conversation, the post sex ‘I’m so amazingly happy and just want to hold you forever’. Times that they had both been missing.

And Pepper’s shrill voice rang through the living room, interrupting what FRIDAY was saying.

“Tony? Where the hell are you? Your schedule says Peter’s in class. You missed the debrief with me about Sydney. You missed turning over the patent designs to the engineering team to get them ready for you. And, more importantly, you missed the damn conference call about the merger. Me sticking to your schedule only works if _you_ stick to your schedule.”

Peter’s eyes went wide. His mouth was closed tight. He was afraid to breathe, afraid Ms. Potts would hear him.

Tony gave a resigned sigh. Instead of being made guilty by the accusation, instead of putting on his mask, he kept his arm around Peter and put a light kiss on his shoulder.

“Do _not_ interrupt FRIDAY’s protocols when I’m with Peter. Ask her first if I am, and if I am, bug off. I’m not at my appointments because shit happens, schedules change suddenly. You know how to deal with it when that happens. Tell them I’m irresponsible or whatever the hell you used to tell them when you were my PA. Or impress them and tell them Iron Man had urgent business. But when schedules change, Peter's changes come first.”

There was a long pause. Peter tried to shrink into Tony’s arms, as if Pepper could see them, could see what they had been doing, could see Peter’s confession. Could see the weight of it. He almost covered up his exposed ear to hide from the inevitable scolding.

There wasn’t one. 

“I don’t have a problem with that,” she said, her tone softening. “I thought about what you said last night — and I swear to god if you wake me up at two am again… I am _not_ your PA — but you’re right. I wasn’t…” 

Pepper paused again. Tony didn’t fill the void with words. The silence was a negotiating tactic, designed to force Pepper into revealing herself. 

“Like you used to say, it’s a _me_ problem. I wasn’t… I wasn’t dealing with your new relationship well. I’m sorry.” She didn’t even have to wait for the response. She knew the argument already. “Oh god Tony, normal people say those words.”

Tony smiled at Peter. Now he knew it was an old argument and not one he only had with him. 

“But I’ll put it in your terms,” Pepper continued. “Your relationship with Peter is serious. I expected you to make changes in your life when ours was. And you did. Now you’re doing the same for him. So I’ll make the changes you told me to. All of them. But you need to hold up your end.” 

“Happened too fast, Pep. Then things got busy…”

“I do _not_ want to know.”

Peter covered his face with both hands.

“Not like that.” Tony rolled his eyes even as Peter hid his head, again, in the crook of Tony’s neck.

“All right, Tony. It was sudden. You weren’t able to tell me that your schedule had suddenly changed. So automate it. I’m not going to override FRIDAY.”

“You won’t be able to. I’m changing that protocol,” Tony said, easily. His fingers ran along Peter’s arm. He was still looking up at him, still smiling. Still himself. He could learn how to do that. Stay himself and not ever… not when he was with Peter. That mask was going to be boxed up and put way in the metaphorical attic with all the other old, unneeded things. Peter said when he wanted to do something bad enough he just did it. And he’d never wanted to do something more than this.

“She watches you all the time. She knows when things have changed on your end. She knows when you have business scheduled. I won’t override her if she lets me know what’s happening. That’s all I need. I _do_ know how to cover for you with other people, and whatever I need to discuss with you… it’ll wait until you’re available.”

“I can do that.”

“Good. Then I can work around the times you gave me _and_ know when changes happen. Please at least _look_ at your schedule for tomorrow when Peter’s in class. Let me know what you will and will not be able to make so I can reschedule. The company in Sydney is antsy.”

“Let them be antsy. They need Stark more than we need them. Let ’em twist.” Tony said. It was hard to keep _‘THE Tony Stark’_ out of his voice. It was easier to talk to Pepper casually about the business. It was… less so when he was actually _conducting_ business. He’d learn. The motivation for his study was sitting warm in his lap. 

“Eh… you’re right,” Pepper agreed. Tony had a talent for knowing when a little harshness was needed.

“Okay Pep. I’ll look at the schedule later. You’ll know before morning or FRIDAY will tell you. But I’m done talking about anything Stark for the day. Bye.”

FRIDAY cut the connection. “FRIDAY, you heard it, do it.”

“Yes boss.”

Tony fished Peter’s head out of his hiding place and looked at him. “Taken care of. No more interruptions.” He smiled. “I wasn’t sure if she’d actually do it.

“Oh my god Tony,” Peter said, whispered really, his mouth still covered with his hand. Reminding himself that Ms. Potts couldn’t really see that they were together, still naked, on the couch. She hadn’t seen what they had done, how Peter had confessed to Tony the secret of his toys, the secret of his virginity. 

“Tony — I’ve fought aliens on other _planets._ But I’ve never been as terrified of them as I have been of Ms. Potts.”

“Yeah. It makes for being a good CEO. When she gets going she can put the fear of god into someone.” He cupped Peter’s chin. “But she knows when I mean what I’m saying. And I’ve never meant anything I’ve said more than when I told her that I couldn’t lose you.” He stroked Peter’s face with his thumb. _“I told her I’m in love with you._

 _“You_ are my life. Not the business. Honestly. I’m Tony fucking Stark for chrissakes. If someone wants to deal with Stark Industries, they can get _their_ ass on a plane and come to _me.”_ He took a deep breath. “That is **_my_ **name on the building.” 

Peter pulled Tony’s arms around him and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the alarm of the phone call to subside. 

“Hey,” he said gently, wanting to do _anything_ other than get up and get dressed. “You were asleep just now. What if we lay down on the bed for a while? See if you can catch another hour of REM? For me? If you don’t sleep, we can talk some more.”

“Right now, if you let me hold you, I’ll let you do just about anything.” Tony smiled softly.

~~~~~

They lay side by side, sometimes forehead to forehead, sometimes holding hands, sometimes touching faces. Peter felt his eyes flutter closed. He stopped trying to fight it. Soon Tony was doing the same. 

Then, when Tony was asleep, Peter had time to lie on his back, wide-eyed, jaw open, and _wonder._

He remembered a similar feeling, the first night they had been together. When Tony had come, his face buried in Peter’s neck and Peter was glad, because it meant Tony couldn’t see his eyes as wide as saucers, trying to believe it. Trying to believe it was all real.

He was trying to believe it all now. 

The information. The confessions. And then the promises — hard to believe, until he had _personally witnessed_ Tony tell Pepper… dear God he could hardly believe it had happened and he had witnessed it himself. Had Pepper Potts… THE Pepper Potts, actually said the words ‘your new relationship’? Had she actually apologized for not ‘taking it seriously’? 

And the _things_ Tony had told him… even more than hearing the man say the word ‘sorry’, was all this new personal information about Tony’s life, things he had never heard before, never considered before. Twenty-four hours ago he had marveled at how _little_ of a relationship their relationship consisted of, but now…

He thought about his phone, and cursed himself for the thousandth time that day. WHY did he have to be such a drama queen and actually _destroy_ it? He longed to lay there on the bed and reread those texts one more time, both the ones Tony had sent him in the very beginning and the emails he had received that morning.

When he read those emails before breakfast he felt his heart skip a beat. Still, over breakfast, he was conflicted. He wanted to feel relieved (Tony was, after all, promising him everything he wanted!) but didn’t feel relieved at all.

Because he had been promised it all before. It had felt disloyal to think it, but it was true. Tony had promised they’d have some more time together soon (tomorrow, next week, next month, summer vacation, etc. etc. etc.) 

But now, still practically vibrating from the alarm of Pepper’s phone call, it all felt different _._ This was more than promises, this was concrete _action._

More importantly, Tony now seemed more comfortable giving Peter information than he ever had before. Not that Tony wasn’t expressive, he had been remarkably expressive from the beginning. About the positive things. But this new information? About Tony’s past, and his childhood… _that_ was huge. Monumentous. After the spiderbite, and being made an Avenger while aboard a spaceship, this might have been the third most important day of his life. (After being dusted and brought back from dust, of course. Okay, the fifth most important day of his life.)

More importantly Tony had admitted to _fear,_ had admitted to it more than once. Twenty-four hours ago Peter Parker would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Tony Stark wasn’t afraid of anything. Now he knew better. This was knowledge he alone had, and it was something to treasure. 

And even better, _Tony_ had heard _Peter’s_ most secret and terrifying confession, and he had _understood._ Had recognized Peter’s need for honesty, had expressed value for it, and had considered it unbroken by his single, embarrassing exception. (And had been calling Peter ‘my virgin’ in his head for a while now. Peter’s past self was sputtering — but Current Peter was on cloud nine.)

And right now, whether Tony admitted to it or not, he was letting Peter take care of him. And what was even better? Peter could do a _better_ job of taking care of him, could be a _better_ partner, now that Tony was willing to tell him what was going on in his head. 

And that was everything.

There was more, of course, so much more. More to tell. More that Tony had to know, more that Tony might not like. Peter grimaced a little and reached out and touched his sleeping lover gently. This moment seemed so perfect, he didn’t want to think about what had to happen next.

But it had to happen. ‘I needed you to explain some things for me… and I had to figure them out on my own, and I didn’t like that’, he had said to Tony in the kitchen, and he hadn’t even realized until he said it, that it was true. Figuring out things on his own was his new normal — but letting Tony in on those things had to become the new normal too. Still, he had reason to be hopeful. He _had_ told Tony many other things, many difficult (and embarrassing!) things and Tony was still here. Surely (hopefully) the last part would go the same way. Surely he had good reason to feel optimistic.

After all — they _were_ Iron Man and Spider-Man. They were _epic._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this story, we hope you'll consider subscribing to the [Messages Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558027) so you don't miss future segments.

**Author's Note:**

> You can't leave more kudos, so leave a <3 as a 2nd one.
> 
> You've come this far, why not leave a comment? 
> 
> Comments are soooooooooo easy. Just cut and paste your favorite line!
> 
> Witchway's Starker blog on tumblr is [thestarkerisobvious](https://thestarkerisobvious.tumblr.com/).  
> Von's Starker blog on tumblr is [starker-stories](https://starker-stories.tumblr.com/).  
> Come on by and visit us.


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